Cognitive Regulation during Decision Making Shifts Behavioral Control between Ventromedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Value Systems

Abstract

Cognitive regulation is often used to influence behavioral outcomes. However, the computational and neurobiological mechanisms by which it affects behavior remain unknown. We studied this issue using an fMRI task in which human participants used cognitive regulation to up- and down-regulate their cravings for foods at the time of choice. We found that activity in both ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) correlated with value. We also found evidence that two distinct regulatory mechanisms were at work: value modulation, which operates by changing the values assigned to foods in vmPFC and dlPFC at the time of choice, and behavioral control modulation, which operates by changing the relative influence of the vmPFC and dlPFC value signals on the action selection process used to make choices. In particular, during down-regulation, activation decreased in the value-sensitive region of dlPFC (indicating value modulation) but not in vmPFC, and the relative contribution of the two value signals to behavior shifted towards the dlPFC (indicating behavioral control modulation). The opposite pattern was observed during up-regulation: activation increased in vmPFC but not dlPFC, and the relative contribution to behavior shifted towards the vmPFC. Finally, ventrolateral PFC and posterior parietal cortex were more active during both up- and down-regulation, and were functionally connected with vmPFC and dlPFC during cognitive regulation, which suggests that they help to implement the changes to the decision-making circuitry generated by cognitive regulation.

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Encodes Emotional Value

“…A recent meta-analysis indicated that, across several studies using cognitive reappraisal, fear extinction, or placebo manipulations, regulating negative emotions showed converging activation within a subregion of the vmPFC (Diekhof et al, 2011). This investigation and other studies on the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation (Urry et al, 2006;Johnstone et al, 2007;Delgado et al, 2008b) have suggested that vmPFC activations observed during regulation are consistent with a role in cognitive control. Because this meta-analysis and most existing studies of reappraisal focused only on the regulation of negative affect, an alternative explanation remains: the increased signal in the vmPFC reflects the change in emotional value after emotion regulation.…”

Does my brain want what my eyes like? – How food liking and choice influence spatio-temporal brain dynamics of food viewing

“…Several functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that in particular the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) subserves the computation of an overall subjective value of choice options and thereby biases decisions (Kable and Glimcher, 2009). Dorsal and ventrolateral PFC (dlPFC and vlPFC, respectively) have been shown to modulate vmPFC activity and are involved in inhibitory control processes (Hare et al, 2009;Hutcherson et al, 2012) as well as emotional self-regulation (Ochsner and Gross, 2008). For example, activity of the vmPFC was found to be modulated by lateral PFC activity in individuals who are successful (self-) controllers of their dietary choices (Hare et al, 2009).…”

Adolescent impatience decreases with increased frontostriatal connectivity

“…In addition, Luo et al (23) showed that striatal activity is greater when participants are presented with immediate rewards versus preference-matched delayed rewards. On the other hand, more patient behavior may result from control processes that bias attention away from immediate rewards and/or emphasize the importance of future goals (24,25). There are several studies that show that individual differences in future orientation are associated with more patient choices (1,21,26).…”