“…The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) has been associated with an extensive number of cognitive functions, including conscious awareness and cognitive control (Leech, Kamourieh, Beckmann, & Sharp, 2011), emotional memory encoding (Maddock, Garrett, & Buonocore, 2001), memory retrieval and planning (Vann, Aggleton, & Maguire, 2009), maintaining changes in the external environment (Pearson, Heilbronner, Barack, Hayden, & Platt, 2011), and controlling the balance between external and internal attention (Leech & Sharp, 2014). Previous fMRI studies have observed stronger activity of the PCC either during difficult choices (Kitayama et al, 2013;Qin et al, 2011;Tompson, Chua, & Kitayama, 2016) or after difficult choices (Izuma et al, 2010) as compared to easy choices. Another study showed that PCC activity is positively correlated with the perceived desirability of objects (Kawabata & Zeki, 2008).…”