Focusing Attention on the Health Aspects of Foods Changes Value Signals in vmPFC and Improves Dietary Choice

Attention is thought to play a key role in the computation of stimulus values at the time of choice, which suggests that attention manipulations could be used to improve decision-making in domains where self-control lapses are pervasive. We used an fMRI food choice task with non-dieting human subjects to investigate whether exogenous cues that direct attention to the healthiness of foods could improve dietary choices. Behaviorally, we found that subjects made healthier choices in the presence of health cues. In parallel, stimulus value signals in ventromedial prefrontal cortex were more responsive to the healthiness of foods in the presence of health cues, and this effect was modulated by activity in regions of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms used in successful self-control can be activated by exogenous attention cues, and provide insights into the processes through which behavioral therapies and public policies could facilitate self-control

Decoding Continuous Variables from Neuroimaging Data: Basic and Clinical Applications

The application of statistical machine learning techniques to neuroimaging data has allowed researchers to decode the cognitive and disease states of participants. The majority of studies using these techniques have focused on pattern classification to decode the type of object a participant is viewing, the type of cognitive task a participant is completing, or the disease state of a participant's brain. However, an emerging body of literature is extending these classification studies to the decoding of values of continuous variables (such as age, cognitive characteristics, or neuropsychological state) using high-dimensional regression methods. This review details the methods used in such analyses and describes recent results. We provide specific examples of studies which have used this approach to answer novel questions about age and cognitive and disease states. We conclude that while there is still much to learn about these methods, they provide useful information about the relationship between neural activity and age, cognitive state, and disease state, which could not have been obtained using traditional univariate analytical methods

Differentiating associations between tasks and outcomes in the human brain

2022 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.In order to successfully achieve their goals in a noisy and changing environment, organisms must continually learn both Pavlovian (stimulus-outcome or S-O) and instrumental (action-outcome or A-O) associations. A wide range of brain regions are implicated in reinforcement learning and decision-making, including the basal ganglia, medial prefrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). One possible explanation of disparate findings is that activation depends on the nature of the action or response under consideration. To investigate representations of task-reward associations, subjects switched between an emotional judgement task and a spatial judgement task, combined with either a high or low level of reward. A general linear model (GLM) compared activation for different combinations of task and reward. A cluster in the mid-prefrontal cortex was more active for right versus left response, whereas a cluster in the midbrain near the brainstem was more active for left responses. Performance of the spatial task was associated with activation in the ventral occipital cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex. Clusters in the posterior parietal cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex were more active during the emotion task. Receiving a large reward was accompanied by activation in primary somatosensory cortex and auditory cortex, while receiving a low reward appeared to recruit the anterior cingulate cortex. Comparing trials which yielded a reward versus trials with no reward revealed activation in the dorsal prefrontal cortex. A 2-way ANOVA examining independent contributions of response and reward found an effect of response in cuneus and pre-cuneus, an effect of reward in anterior insula and sensorimotor cortex, and an interaction in the post-central gyrus. A 2-way ANOVA of task and reward found a main effect of task in several clusters in the medial occipital cortex, a main effect of reward in somatosensory cortex and anterior insula, and an interaction in the ventral occipital and anterior prefrontal cortex

Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making

Citation: Cherry, J. B. C., Bruce, J. M., Lusk, J. L., Crespi, J. M., Lim, S. L., & Bruce, A. S. (2015). Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making. Plos One, 10(4), 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120541For consumers today, the perceived ethicality of a food's production method can be as important a purchasing consideration as its price. Still, few studies have examined how, neurofunctionally, consumers are making ethical, food-related decisions. We examined how consumers' ethical concern about a food's production method may relate to how, neurofunctionally, they make decisions whether to purchase that food. Forty-six participants completed a measure of the extent to which they took ethical concern into consideration when making food-related decisions. They then underwent a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while performing a food-related decision-making (FRDM) task. During this task, they made 56 decisions whether to purchase a food based on either its price (i.e., high or low, the "price condition") or production method (i.e., with or without the use of cages, the "production method condition"), but not both. For 23 randomly selected participants, we performed an exploratory, whole-brain correlation between ethical concern and differential neurofunctional activity in the price and production method conditions. Ethical concern correlated negatively and significantly with differential neurofunctional activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). For the remaining 23 participants, we performed a confirmatory, region-of-interest (ROI) correlation between the same variables, using an 8-mm3 volume situated in the left dlPFC. Again, the variables correlated negatively and significantly. This suggests, when making ethical, food-related decisions, the more consumers take ethical concern into consideration, the less they may rely on neurofunctional activity in the left dlPFC, possibly because making these decisions is more routine for them, and therefore a more perfunctory process requiring fewer cognitive resources

Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making

Citation: Cherry, J. B. C., Bruce, J. M., Lusk, J. L., Crespi, J. M., Lim, S. L., & Bruce, A. S. (2015). Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making. Plos One, 10(4), 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120541For consumers today, the perceived ethicality of a food's production method can be as important a purchasing consideration as its price. Still, few studies have examined how, neurofunctionally, consumers are making ethical, food-related decisions. We examined how consumers' ethical concern about a food's production method may relate to how, neurofunctionally, they make decisions whether to purchase that food. Forty-six participants completed a measure of the extent to which they took ethical concern into consideration when making food-related decisions. They then underwent a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while performing a food-related decision-making (FRDM) task. During this task, they made 56 decisions whether to purchase a food based on either its price (i.e., high or low, the "price condition") or production method (i.e., with or without the use of cages, the "production method condition"), but not both. For 23 randomly selected participants, we performed an exploratory, whole-brain correlation between ethical concern and differential neurofunctional activity in the price and production method conditions. Ethical concern correlated negatively and significantly with differential neurofunctional activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). For the remaining 23 participants, we performed a confirmatory, region-of-interest (ROI) correlation between the same variables, using an 8-mm3 volume situated in the left dlPFC. Again, the variables correlated negatively and significantly. This suggests, when making ethical, food-related decisions, the more consumers take ethical concern into consideration, the less they may rely on neurofunctional activity in the left dlPFC, possibly because making these decisions is more routine for them, and therefore a more perfunctory process requiring fewer cognitive resources

Neurofunctional Correlates of Ethical, Food-Related Decision-Making

A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author’s publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.For consumers today, the perceived ethicality of a food’s production method can be as important a purchasing consideration as its price. Still, few studies have examined how, neurofunctionally, consumers are making ethical, food-related decisions. We examined how consumers’ ethical concern about a food’s production method may relate to how, neurofunctionally, they make decisions whether to purchase that food. Forty-six participants completed a measure of the extent to which they took ethical concern into consideration when making food-related decisions. They then underwent a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while performing a food-related decision-making (FRDM) task. During this task, they made 56 decisions whether to purchase a food based on either its price (i.e., high or low, the “price condition”) or production method (i.e., with or without the use of cages, the “production method condition”), but not both. For 23 randomly selected participants, we performed an exploratory, whole-brain correlation between ethical concern and differential neurofunctional activity in the price and production method conditions. Ethical concern correlated negatively and significantly with differential neurofunctional activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). For the remaining 23 participants, we performed a confirmatory, region-of-interest (ROI) correlation between the same variables, using an 8-mm3 volume situated in the left dlPFC. Again, the variables correlated negatively and significantly. This suggests, when making ethical, food-related decisions, the more consumers take ethical concern into consideration, the less they may rely on neurofunctional activity in the left dlPFC, possibly because making these decisions is more routine for them, and therefore a more perfunctory process requiring fewer cognitive resources

Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising

Citation: McFadden, B. R., Lusk, J. L., Crespi, J. M., Cherry, J. B. C., Martin, L. E., Aupperle, R. L., & Bruce, A. S. (2015). Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising. Plos One, 10(5), 15. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0125243Consumers prefer to pay low prices and increase animal welfare; however consumers are typically forced to make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Campaign advertising (i.e., advertising used during the 2008 vote on Proposition 2 in California) may affect how consumers make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Neuroimaging data was used to determine the effects of brain activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) on choices making a tradeoff between price and animal welfare and responsiveness to campaign advertising. Results indicated that activation in the dlPFC was greater when making choices that forced a tradeoff between price and animal welfare, compared to choices that varied only by price or animal welfare. Furthermore, greater activation differences in right dlPFC between choices that forced a tradeoff and choices that did not, indicated greater responsiveness to campaign advertising

Die Neuronale Berechnung von Bewertungen in der Entscheidungsfindung

Background: Decision-making plays a key role in the human experience and the quality of our choices has a fundamental impact on our future. To better understand the decision-making process, the field of decision neuroscience has focused on the concept of decision value and found that the overall value of a choice option correlates with neural activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). However, it is still unclear how exactly this neural signal is computed. Methods: Two studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were conducted to investigate this process from different angles. The first study is based on the idea that the overall value of a choice option is typically determined by evaluating and integrating different attributes. In particular, the goal was to investigate whether attribute values are computed in vmPFC, like overall values, or whether they are computed in distinct attribute-specific regions. The experiment consisted of a choice task with abstract stimuli, which were associated with monetary rewards and varied with respect to the attributes motion and color (associated with the brain regions V5 and V4, respectively). The second study investigated how the computation of decision value is affected in patients suffering from alcohol dependence. The task required the evaluation of monetary offers with respect to dynamically changing constraints and different levels of uncertainty. Results: The first study could replicate the finding that overall values correlate with activity in vmPFC. However, I did not find that attribute values were systematically represented in attribute-specific regions. Instead, attribute values were associated with activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, ventral striatum, and posterior inferior temporal gyrus. In the second study, there were no group differences in value-related neural activity or task performance, but patients showed lower activation associated with model-based decision processes in the caudate nucleus. Discussion: The results support the idea that the neural mechanisms for choices should be studied from the perspective of neural networks instead of investigating the functional properties of brain regions in isolation. Further, the findings of the second experiment demonstrate that clinical conditions like alcohol dependence can affect regional activations related to choices even in the absence of alcohol-related stimuli. However, this did not significantly affect behavioral task performance in the choice task, which suggests that the dynamic properties of decision-making networks can allow for compensatory mechanisms.Hintergrund: Die Entscheidungsfindung spielt eine zentrale Rolle in unserem Leben und die Qualität unserer Entscheidungen hat einen großen Einfluss auf unsere Zukunft. Um den Entscheidungsprozess besser zu verstehen, hat sich die kognitive Neurowissenschaft bisher auf das Konzept des Entscheidungswerts konzentriert. Einer der wichtigsten Befunde ist, dass der Gesamtwert einer Entscheidungsoption mit der neuronalen Aktivität im ventromedialen präfrontalen Kortex (vmPFC) korreliert. Es ist jedoch immer noch unklar, wie genau dieses Signal im Gehirn berechnet wird. Methodik: Um diesen Prozess besser zu verstehen, wurden zwei Studien durchgeführt, welche die funktionelle Magnetresonanztomographie nutzen. Die erste Studie basiert auf der Idee, dass der Gesamtwert einer Entscheidungsoption sich in der Regel aus den Werten von verschiedenen Attributen zusammensetzt. Insbesondere sollte untersucht werden, ob die Werte von Attributen im vmPFC berechnet werden, wie Gesamtbewertungen, oder in abgegrenzten, Attribut-spezifischen Regionen. Das Experiment bestand aus einer Entscheidungsaufgabe mit abstrakten Stimuli, die mit monetären Belohnungen verbunden waren und hinsichtlich der Attribute Bewegung (assoziiert mit der Hirnregion V5) und Farbe (Hirnregion V4) variierten. Die zweite Studie untersuchte, wie die Berechnung des Entscheidungswerts bei Patienten mit Alkoholabhängigkeit beeinflusst wird. In der experimentellen Aufgabe mussten Entscheidungen zu verschiedenen Geldangeboten unter Unsicherheit gemacht werden. Ergebnisse: In der ersten Studie konnte repliziert werden, dass Gesamtwerte mit der Aktivität im vmPFC korrelieren. Allerdings wurde nicht bestätigt, dass Attributwerte systematisch in Attribut-spezifischen Hirnregionen repräsentiert werden. Stattdessen waren Attributwerte mit Aktivitäten im posterioren cingulären Kortex, ventralen Striatum und posterioren inferioren temporalen Gyrus verbunden. In der zweiten Studie gab es keine Unterschiede in der wertbezogenen neuronalen Aktivität oder im Verhalten zwischen gesunden Probanden und Patienten, aber die Patienten zeigten während modellbasierter Entscheidungsprozesse eine geringere Aktivierung des Nucleus caudatus. Diskussion: Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass die Charakterisierung der Funktionen von isolierten Hirnregionen für die Beschreibung von neuronalen Entscheidungsprozessen weniger geeignet ist und Entscheidungsprozesse stattdessen innerhalb dynamischer Netzwerke berechnet werden. Die Ergebnisse des zweiten Experiments zeigen außerdem, dass Krankheiten wie Alkoholabhängigkeit die neuronalen Prozesse von Entscheidungen auch dann beeinflussen können, wenn keine alkoholbezogenen Stimuli vorliegen. Dies hatte in der Studie allerdings keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Qualität der Entscheidungen, was darauf hindeutet, dass die dynamischen Eigenschaften von neuronalen Entscheidungsnetzwerken Kompensationsmechanismen ermöglichen können

Neural Signals of Video Advertisement Liking:Insights into Psychological Processes and their Temporal Dynamics

What drives the liking of video advertisements? The authors analyzed neural signals during ad exposure from three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data sets (113 participants from two countries watching 85 video ads) with automated meta-analytic decoding (Neurosynth). These brain-based measures of psychological processes—including perception and language (information processing), executive function and memory (cognitive functions), and social cognition and emotion (social-affective response)—predicted subsequent self-report ad liking, with emotion and memory being the earliest predictorsafter the first three seconds. Over the span of ad exposure, while the predictiveness of emotion peaked early and fell, that of social cognition had a peak-and-stable pattern, followed by a late peak of predictiveness in perception and executive function.At the aggregate level, neural signals—especially those associated with social-affective response—improved the prediction of out-of-sample ad liking compared with traditional anatomically based neuroimaging analysis and self-report liking. Finally, earlyonset social-affective response predicted population ad liking in a behavioral replication. Overall, this study helps delineate the psychological mechanisms underlying ad processing and ad liking and proposes a novel neuroscience-based approach for generating psychological insights and improving out-of-sample predictions

Single Neuron Correlates of Learning, Value, and Decision in the Human Brain

In this thesis, I present several new results on how the human brain performs value-based learning and decision-making, leveraging rare single neuron recordings from epilepsy patients in vmPFC, preSMA, dACC, amygdala, and hippocampus, as well as reinforcement learning models of behavior. With a probabilistic gambling task we determined that human preSMA neurons integrate computational components of stimulus value such as expected values, uncertainty, and novelty, to encode an utility value and, subsequently, decisions themselves. Additionally, we found that post-decision related encoding of variables for the chosen option was more widely distributed and especially prominent in vmPFC. Additionally, with a Pavlovian conditioning task we found evidence of stimulus-stimulus associations in vmPFC, while both vmPFC and amygdala performed predictive value coding, establishing direct evidence for model-based Pavlovian conditioning in human vmPFC neurons. Finally, in a Pavlovian observational learning paradigm, we found a significant proportion of amygdala neurons whose activity correlated with both expected rewards for oneself and others, and in tracking outcome values received by oneself or other agents, further establishing amygdala as an important center in social cognition. Taken together, our findings expand our understanding of the role of several human cortical brain regions in creating and updating value representations which are leveraged during decision-making.</p