Functional Imaging of Decision Conflict

Pochon, Jean Baptiste; Riis, Jason; Sanfey, Alan G.; Nystrom, Leigh E.; Cohen, Jonathan D.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.4195-07.2008

Cited by 173 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…4A), (ii) depend on individual decision-making efficiency, and (iii) be greater for harder than for easier decisions. Note that the identified accumulator regions do not map onto neural systems associated with decision conflict (in anterior cingulate cortex or DLPFC) (30) or processing difficulty in general (31,32). Rather, our finding of neural accumulators in parietal cortex is highly consistent with nonhuman and human data from perceptual decision making, as neurons accumulating perceptual evidence based on noisy stimuli were identified in parietal cortex (8,16).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

How the brain integrates costs and benefits during decision making

Basten

Biele

Heekeren

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

414

359

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When we make decisions, the benefits of an option often need to be weighed against accompanying costs. Little is known, however, about the neural systems underlying such cost-benefit computations. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and choice modeling, we show that decision making based on cost-benefit comparison can be explained as a stochastic accumulation of costbenefit difference. Model-driven functional MRI shows that ventromedial and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compare costs and benefits by computing the difference between neural signatures of anticipated benefits and costs from the ventral striatum and amygdala, respectively. Moreover, changes in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal in the bilateral middle intraparietal sulcus reflect the accumulation of the difference signal from ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In sum, we show that a neurophysiological mechanism previously established for perceptual decision making, that is, the difference-based accumulation of evidence, is fundamental also in value-based decisions. The brain, thus, weighs costs against benefits by combining neural benefit and cost signals into a single, differencebased neural representation of net value, which is accumulated over time until the individual decides to accept or reject an option.hen we make decisions, the benefits of a decision option often need to be weighed against accompanying costs. Cost-benefit integration, thus, is an important aspect of decision making. However, value-based decision making is typically investigated in the context of decision uncertainty (1-3), so little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying the integration of costs and benefits as such.Cost-benefit-based decision making involves the binary decision to either accept or reject a choice option based on two competing attributes-the option's expected rewards and losses. Such binary accept-versus-reject decisions bear a strong resemblance to twoalternative choices in perceptual decision making (4, 5). For example, when monkeys performed a direction-of-motion discrimination task in which they had to decide whether a noisy field of dots was moving in one direction or its opposite direction (e.g., leftward or rightward) and indicated their choice with a quick eye movement to the target on the respective side, motion-sensitive neurons in middle temporal visual area MT either respond to leftward motion or to rightward motion. Prefrontal and parietal neurons, in contrast, form a decision by accumulating the difference in the activities of populations of neurons in area MT that code for opposite directions of motion. The monkey's saccade response is faster when more dots are moving in one direction, and this effect is predicted by the strength of the accumulated neuronal difference signal (6). A difference-based decision mechanism has also been identified in the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during perceptual face-house decisions (4, 7). Thus, we hypothesized that cost-benefit decisions involve an analogous decisio...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

How the brain integrates costs and benefits during decision making

Basten

Biele

Heekeren

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

414

359

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This analysis indeed revealed that NAcc activity scaled with product liking (Figure 3A), consistent with previous evidence that NAcc activity tracks anticipated reward and product preference (Knutson et al 2001Erk et al 2002). Neural activity correlated with liking was also found in the adjacent caudate (Table 1), which has been linked to reward-motivated behavior (Balleine, Delgado and Hikosaka 2007) and in the anterior cingulate cortex, thought to be involved in conflict monitoring and decision difficulty (Bush, Luu and Posner 2000;Pochon et al 2008) among other processes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Cost Conscious? The Neural and Behavioral Impact of Price Primacy on Decision Making

Karmarkar

Shiv

Knutson

2015

Journal of Marketing Research

101

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Price is a key factor in most purchases, but it can be presented at different stages of decision making. The authors examine the sequence-dependent effects of price and product information on the decision-making process at both neural and behavioral levels. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, the price of a product was shown to participants either before or after the product itself was presented. Early exposure to price, or “price primacy,” altered the process of valuation, as observed in altered patterns of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex immediately before making a purchase decision. Specifically, whereas viewing products first resulted in evaluations strongly related to products’ attractiveness or desirability, viewing prices first appeared to promote overall evaluations related to products’ monetary worth. Consistent with this framework, the authors show that price primacy can increase purchase of bargain-priced products when their worth is easily recognized. Together, these results suggest that price primacy highlights considerations of product worth and can thereby influence purchasing.

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“…During temporal discounting, for example, choosing between a desirable reward now (e.g., $15 today) and an appealing delayed reward (e.g., $30 in two weeks) is more conflicting than choosing between the same distal reward and a smaller immediate return (e.g., $1 today). While subjective conflicts differ in important ways from that which arises in classic conflict tasks, neuroimaging suggests that decision conflicts are also tracked by the aMCC (e.g., Blair et al, 2006;Kitayama, Chua, Thompson, & Han, 2013;Pochon, Riis, Sanfey, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008;Shenhav & Buckner, 2014). .…”

Section: The Emotive Nature Of Conflict and Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortex

Saunders

Lin

Milyavskaya

et al. 2017

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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The detection of conflict between incompatible impulses, thoughts, and actions is a ubiquitous source of motivation across theories of goal-directed action. In this overview, we explore the hypothesis that conflict is emotive, integrating perspectives from affective science and cognitive neuroscience. Initially, we review evidence suggesting that the mental and biological processes that monitor for information processing conflict-particularly those generated by the anterior midcingulate cortex-track the affective significance of conflict and use this signal to motivate increased control. In this sense, variation in control resembles a form of affect regulation in which control implementation counteracts the aversive experience of conflict. We also highlight emerging evidence proposing that states and dispositions associated with acceptance facilitate control by tuning individuals to the emotive nature of conflict, before proposing avenues for future research, including investigating the role of affect in reinforcement learning and decision making.Keywords: emotion; cognitive control; motivation; event-related potentials; negative affect; medial prefrontal cortex;The Emotive Nature of Conflict 3 The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortexMonitoring performance for goal conflicting thoughts, feelings, and behaviours underlies flexible responding in complex, unpredictable environments. During smoking cessation, for example, quickly detecting impulses (e.g., the desire to smoke) or actions (e.g., picking up a cigarette) that conflict with the goal to quit can signal the need to control behaviour, safeguarding goal progress. Beyond unwanted temptations, conflict is evoked across diverse explanatory frameworks, ranging from high-level dissonant states that emerge when individual's hold multiple inconsistent ideologies, to seemingly lower-level conflicts that occur when stimulus dimensions cue mutually incompatible responses (e.g., Stroop conflict).Underscoring the theoretical ubiquity of conflict, detecting and overcoming some internal conflict or discord is fundamental to multiple seminal perspectives in western philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience (e.g

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Functional Imaging of Decision Conflict

Cited by 173 publications

References 20 publications

How the brain integrates costs and benefits during decision making

How the brain integrates costs and benefits during decision making

Cost Conscious? The Neural and Behavioral Impact of Price Primacy on Decision Making

The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortex

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