Corticostriatal Circuits Encode the Subjective Value of Perceived Control

Abstract

The ability to perceive and exercise control over an outcome is both desirable and beneficial to our well-being. It has been shown that animals and humans alike exhibit behavioral bias towards seeking control and that such bias recruits the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and striatum. Yet, this bias remains to be quantitatively captured and studied neurally. Here, we employed a behavioral task to measure the preference for control and characterize its neural underpinnings. Participants made a series of binary choices between having control and no-control over a game for monetary reward. The mere presence of the control option evoked activity in the ventral striatum. Importantly, we manipulated the expected value (EV) of each choice pair to extract the pairing where participants were equally likely to choose either option. The difference in EV between the options at this point of equivalence was inferred as the subjective value of control. Strikingly, perceiving control inflated the reward value of the associated option by 30% and this value inflation was tracked by the vmPFC. Altogether, these results capture the subjective value of perceived control inherent in decision making and highlight the role of corticostriatal circuitry in the perception of control.

Internal control beliefs shape positive affect and associated neural dynamics during outcome valuation

“…7) and were also more willing to forgo money in order to play the HC task (Spearman's rho = 0.29, one-sided p = 0.029; for POE this effect was not significant after correcting for multiple comparisons; Spearman's rho = −0.18, one-sided p = 0.106; all p-values FDR-corrected). In line with the previous literature on perceived control and task preferences 3,55 , we also observed that people who experienced stronger differences in control beliefs (HC-MC) more strongly preferred the HC task. Participants experiencing stronger control were more likely to select the HC task in case of equal offers (Spearman's rho = 0.28, one-sided p = 0.048), were willing to forgo money in order to play the HC task (Spearman's rho = 0.26, one-sided p = 0.048), and showed shifts in the POE so that MC offers needed to be larger in order to achieve similar probabilities of selecting HC and MC (Spearman's rho = −0.24, one-sided p = 0.048, all p-values FDR-corrected; see Supplementary Table 7).…”

“…Participants experiencing stronger control were more likely to select the HC task in case of equal offers (Spearman's rho = 0.28, one-sided p = 0.048), were willing to forgo money in order to play the HC task (Spearman's rho = 0.26, one-sided p = 0.048), and showed shifts in the POE so that MC offers needed to be larger in order to achieve similar probabilities of selecting HC and MC (Spearman's rho = −0.24, one-sided p = 0.048, all p-values FDR-corrected; see Supplementary Table 7). Collectively, these findings support and extend previous studies that showed that mere choice is preferable to not having choices 18,55 by highlighting the notion of instrumental control over the outcomes for building preferences 23 , and emphasizing that self-related positive affect might be a relevant factor for mediating motivated behavior 25 .…”

“…Here, individuals with stronger pride responses also preferred the task offering more internal control over the less controllable one. This concords with earlier findings on the value of control 18,55,57 , critically substantiating the claim that self-conscious affect guides future behavior 24 and illustrating motivational effects of pride 25,29 . The preference to exert control even at monetary costs indicates that behavior is partially driven by the extent to which an individual perceives contexts to be controllable and how mastering such contexts shapes positive affect, dovetailing nicely with theories linking experiences of competence to intrinsic motivation 1 .…”

Motivation and cognitive control in depression

“…In line with these findings, it has been shown that in the Stroop task a cue indicating high efficacy improves behavioral performance (Dean Wolf, Cory, & Shenhav, 2018). At the neural level it has been shown that higher perceived efficacy increases the value of outcomes (Wang & Delgado, 2019) and strengthens their representation in the brain network including the striatum, prefrontal and parietal cortex (Wisniewski, Forstmann, & Brass, 2019). While there is initial evidence to support the role of efficacy in the allocation of cognitive effort, the neural dynamics through which efficacy estimates are formed and the way in which they influence the allocation of cognitive control remain unclear.…”

The Protective Effects of Perceived Control During Repeated Exposure to Aversive Stimuli

“…Previous research has largely implicated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC; Amat et al, 2005 ; Christianson et al, 2009 ) and the striatum ( Leotti and Delgado, 2011 , 2014 ) as critical regions associated with perceiving a sense of control. The vmPFC in particular, is important in encoding the subjective value of perceived control—how much people prefer to exert vs. give up control in order to attain a reward ( Wang and Delgado, 2019 ). As such, we hypothesize that perceived control can not only engender avoidance behavior changes via its protective effects, it is likely that the vmPFC is involved in mediating such behavioral changes.…”