How to spend it: the neural basis of budget effects on cost-benefitdecisions of rodent and human consumers

如何使用：预算对啮齿动物和人类消费者成本效益决策影响的神经基础

• 批准号: 417910727
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Tobias Kalenscher, Ph.D., since 6/2022
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsgruppe Vergleichende Psychologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/417910727?language=en
• 关键词: How; spend; neural; basis; budget

In economics, empirical studies of individual choices are mostly based on field data from samples of human population. Despite significant advances in the field of neuroeconomics, we still know very little about the neural basis of economic choice. Previous studies showed that economic theory accounts well for animal behaviors. These animal models serve as a means to probe elementary principles of microeconomics, as well as an indispensable complement to human research by allowing neurobiological manipulations to be employed. Thus, establishing cross-species research will enable us to fully understand the neural process underlying economic behaviors. To this end, I conducted a series of lesion experiments to explore the neural mechanisms of supply and demand in rat consumers. Rats were trained to trade effort (i.e. nose poking) for rewards: their demand for preferred reward decreased as its price (i.e. number of nose pokes required to get a reward) increased, which is expressed as price effect on demand elasticity. When the budget (i.e. total number of nose pokes available per session) was extended to compensate price increases, animals maintained their original consumption pattern, as shown by smaller price elasticities relative to conditions in which price increase was not compensated. This budget effect implies that rats evaluate effort costs not only by their nominal value (e.g. net effort required to obtain a reward), but also with respect to their purchasing power (e.g., how much reward can be purchased given its price and available budget). Interestingly, I have shown that budget effect on price elasticity was diminished when anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was damaged, suggesting this region is crucial for animals to integrate budget information into cost-benefit computations. To assess the comparative value of our task, I translated our animal paradigm to a human budget task, and showed that manipulations of effort and budget had similar effects on human consumer behavior. However, despite these findings, it is still unclear 1) how the budget effect on cost-dependent reward valuation is represented in rat ACC neurons, 2) whether behavioral/cognitive process underlying this budget effect is parallel across species. To address these issues, I propose to conduct tetrode recordings in the ACC of rats performing the effort-budget task. In the second experiment, I plan to refine our human task to develop a fully comparable paradigm that allows future comparisons between species, moving beyond the behavioral level. Results of the two experiments will provide new insights and empirical evidence to interpret effort-based cost-benefit decisions under budget constraint in rodents and humans, which are not captured in previous studies, and advance our understanding of the applicability of economic demand theory across species.

在经济学中，对个人选择的实证研究大多基于人口样本的实地数据。尽管神经经济学领域取得了重大进展，但我们对经济选择的神经基础仍然知之甚少。先前的研究表明，经济理论很好地解释了动物的行为。这些动物模型是探索微观经济学基本原理的一种手段，也是对人类研究不可或缺的补充，允许使用神经生物学操作。因此，建立跨物种研究将使我们能够充分理解经济行为背后的神经过程。为此，我进行了一系列的损伤实验，探索大鼠消费者供给和需求的神经机制。老鼠被训练成用努力（如戳鼻子）换取奖励：它们对首选奖励的需求随着其价格（如获得奖励所需的戳鼻子次数）的增加而减少，这表现为价格对需求弹性的影响。当预算（即每次可用的鼻子戳的总数）被延长以补偿价格上涨时，动物保持其原始的消费模式，这表明相对于没有补偿价格上涨的情况，价格弹性较小。这种预算效应意味着，老鼠评估努力成本时，不仅考虑它们的名义价值（例如，获得奖励所需的净努力），还考虑它们的购买力（例如，在给定价格和可用预算的情况下，可以购买多少奖励）。有趣的是，我已经证明，当前扣带皮层（ACC）受损时，预算对价格弹性的影响减弱，这表明该区域对动物将预算信息整合到成本效益计算中至关重要。为了评估我们的任务的比较价值，我将我们的动物范例转换为人类预算任务，并表明努力和预算的操纵对人类消费行为有类似的影响。然而，尽管有这些发现，目前尚不清楚1)成本依赖的奖励评估的预算效应如何在大鼠ACC神经元中表现出来，2)这种预算效应背后的行为/认知过程是否在物种之间是平行的。为了解决这些问题，我建议在执行努力预算任务的大鼠的ACC中进行四电极记录。在第二个实验中，我计划改进我们的人类任务，以开发一个完全可比的范式，允许未来物种之间的比较，超越行为层面。这两个实验的结果将为解释啮齿动物和人类在预算约束下基于努力的成本效益决策提供新的见解和经验证据，并促进我们对经济需求理论跨物种适用性的理解。