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Articles, Behavioral/Cognitive

Value Signals in the Prefrontal Cortex Predict Individual Preferences across Reward Categories

Jörg Gross, Eva Woelbert, Jan Zimmermann, Sanae Okamoto-Barth, Arno Riedl and Rainer Goebel
Journal of Neuroscience 28 May 2014, 34 (22) 7580-7586; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5082-13.2014
Jörg Gross
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and
2School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands,
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Eva Woelbert
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and
2School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands,
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Jan Zimmermann
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and
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Sanae Okamoto-Barth
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and
2School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands,
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Arno Riedl
2School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands,
3Center for Economic Studies, 81679 München, Germany,
4Institute for the Study of Labor, Schaumburg-Lippe-Strasse 5-9, 53113 Bonn, Germany, and
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Rainer Goebel
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and
5Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Humans can choose between fundamentally different options, such as watching a movie or going out for dinner. According to the utility concept, put forward by utilitarian philosophers and widely used in economics, this may be accomplished by mapping the value of different options onto a common scale, independent of specific option characteristics (Fehr and Rangel, 2011; Levy and Glimcher, 2012). If this is the case, value-related activity patterns in the brain should allow predictions of individual preferences across fundamentally different reward categories. We analyze fMRI data of the prefrontal cortex while subjects imagine the pleasure they would derive from items belonging to two distinct reward categories: engaging activities (like going out for drinks, daydreaming, or doing sports) and snack foods. Support vector machines trained on brain patterns related to one category reliably predict individual preferences of the other category and vice versa. Further, we predict preferences across participants. These findings demonstrate that prefrontal cortex value signals follow a common scale representation of value that is even comparable across individuals and could, in principle, be used to predict choice.

  • choice prediction
  • common scale
  • decision making
  • subjective value
  • utility
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The Journal of Neuroscience: 34 (22)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 34, Issue 22
28 May 2014
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Value Signals in the Prefrontal Cortex Predict Individual Preferences across Reward Categories
Jörg Gross, Eva Woelbert, Jan Zimmermann, Sanae Okamoto-Barth, Arno Riedl, Rainer Goebel
Journal of Neuroscience 28 May 2014, 34 (22) 7580-7586; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5082-13.2014

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Value Signals in the Prefrontal Cortex Predict Individual Preferences across Reward Categories
Jörg Gross, Eva Woelbert, Jan Zimmermann, Sanae Okamoto-Barth, Arno Riedl, Rainer Goebel
Journal of Neuroscience 28 May 2014, 34 (22) 7580-7586; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5082-13.2014
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Keywords

  • choice prediction
  • common scale
  • decision making
  • subjective value
  • utility

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