WWW.JNEUROSCI.ORG
-
The Journal of Neuroscience
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     
-


HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP
The Journal of Neuroscience, September 30, 2009, 29(39):12315-12320; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2575-09.2009

This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplemental Data
Right arrow Submit an eLetter
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when eLetters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Chib, V. S.
Right arrow Articles by O'Doherty, J. P.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Chib, V. S.
Right arrow Articles by O'Doherty, J. P.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Evidence for a Common Representation of Decision Values for Dissimilar Goods in Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Vikram S. Chib,1,2 Antonio Rangel,1,2 Shinsuke Shimojo,1,3 and John P. O'Doherty1,2,4

1Computation and Neural Systems Program, 2Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, and 3Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, and 4Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

Correspondence should be addressed to Vikram S. Chib, 1200 East California Boulevard, M/C 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125. Email: vchib{at}caltech.edu

To make economic choices between goods, the brain needs to compute representations of their values. A great deal of research has been performed to determine the neural correlates of value representations in the human brain. However, it is still unknown whether there exists a region of the brain that commonly encodes decision values for different types of goods, or if, in contrast, the values of different types of goods are represented in distinct brain regions. We addressed this question by scanning subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they made real purchasing decisions among different categories of goods (food, nonfood consumables, and monetary gambles). We found activity in a key brain region previously implicated in encoding goal-values: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was correlated with the subjects' value for each category of good. Moreover, we found a single area in vmPFC to be correlated with the subjects' valuations for all categories of goods. Our results provide evidence that the brain encodes a "common currency" that allows for a shared valuation for different categories of goods.

Received June 2, 2009; revised Aug. 5, 2009; accepted Aug. 14, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Vikram S. Chib, 1200 East California Boulevard, M/C 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125. Email: vchib{at}caltech.edu






 -
-

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help
-
Copyright 2009 by Society for Neuroscience ONLINE ISSN: 1529-2401
-