The role of cingulate cortex in reward-based decision making

扣带皮层在基于奖励的决策中的作用

• 批准号: 7807615
• 负责人: Sarah Rachel Heilbronner
• 金额: $ 3.5万
• 依托单位: DUKE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-02-01 至 2013-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7807615
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Anterior; Area; Behavior; Behavioral; Brain; Brain region; Complex; Data; Decision Making; Disease; Failure; Family; Friends; GABA Agonists; Health; Housing; Individual; Left; Light; Literature; Mediating; Metric; Monkeys; Muscimol; Neurons; Occupations; Outcome; Pattern; Play; Problem Solving; Process; Property; Relative (related person); Research; Rewards; Risk; Role; Signal Transduction; Social Reinforcement; Source; Substance abuse problem; System; Testing; Theft; Time; Uncertainty; abstracting; addiction; base; cingulate cortex; discounting; drug abuser; drug of abuse; neuromechanism; preference; research study; response; reward processing; social

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Addiction may be caused by disordered decision making and reward processing. Thus, understanding the neural mechanisms of reward-guided decision making has the potential to help those addicted to drugs of abuse. One particular brain region, posterior cingulate cortex (CGp), has been implicated in a variety of decision making processes relevant to addiction, including those choices involving risk, time, and social information. Recent studies have suggested that neuronal responses in CGp may encode the subjective value of a chosen option during decisions about risk and time. Thus, a central hypothesis of CGp function is that it is part of a specialized system that integrates information from multiple sources into a single common metric of value. However, one major limitation of these earlier studies is that they have focused on a single decision context (e.g.., risk or delay), but true subjective value representations should be independent of context. Another mystery about CGp function concerns its relationship with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), particularly in those decisions involving delays, risk, and social information. A comparison could potentially shed light on the roles of both regions, as well as the mechanisms of reward-based decision making in general, as there are strong reciprocal connections between the two. I am proposing three separate experiments to address these gaps in the literature. I will record responses of single neurons in CGp and ACC during a task involving three different decision contexts relevant to addiction: risk, delay discounting, and social reinforcement. I hypothesize that firing rates of CGp neurons will signal subjective value independent of decision context, and that response modulations of ACC neurons will be greater than those of CGp neurons during decisions involving social reinforcement, whereas CGp neurons will have relatively larger modulations to decisions involving risk. Finally, I will test whether firing patterns observed in CGp play a causal role in decision making by reversibly inactivating this region. Addiction can be framed as a problem of decision making, of failing to make good decisions about risks, rewards, and delaying gratification. Knowing how the brain makes decisions can be of enormous use in trying to understand and solve the complex health problem of addiction to drugs of abuse. I propose to study how a particularly mysterious brain region known as cingulate cortex guides how we process rewards and make decisions, which may advance our progress toward solving the problem of addiction.

描述（申请人提供）：成瘾可能是由于决策和奖励处理混乱造成的。因此，了解奖励引导决策的神经机制有可能帮助那些滥用药物成瘾的人。一个特殊的大脑区域，后扣带皮层（CGp），已经涉及到各种与成瘾相关的决策过程，包括那些涉及风险，时间和社会信息的选择。最近的研究表明，CGp中的神经元反应可能在关于风险和时间的决策过程中编码所选选项的主观价值。因此，CGp功能的一个核心假设是，它是一个专门系统的一部分，该系统将来自多个来源的信息整合到一个单一的共同价值度量中。然而，这些早期研究的一个主要局限性是，它们集中在一个单一的决策背景（例如，风险或延迟），但真正的主观价值表示应该独立于上下文。关于CGp功能的另一个谜团是它与前扣带皮层（ACC）的关系，特别是在那些涉及延迟、风险和社会信息的决定中。比较可能有助于了解这两个区域的作用，以及基于奖励的决策机制，因为两者之间存在很强的相互联系。我提出了三个独立的实验来解决文献中的这些空白。我将记录在一个任务过程中，涉及三个不同的决策背景相关的成瘾：风险，延迟折扣，和社会强化在CGp和ACC的单个神经元的反应。我假设，放电率的CGp神经元将信号的主观价值独立的决策上下文，ACC神经元的反应调制将大于CGp神经元在涉及社会强化的决策，而CGp神经元将有相对较大的调制涉及风险的决策。最后，我将测试是否在CGP中观察到的放电模式可逆地灭活该区域在决策中发挥因果作用。成瘾可以被定义为一个决策问题，即无法对风险、回报和延迟满足做出正确的决定。了解大脑是如何做出决定的，对于理解和解决滥用药物成瘾这一复杂的健康问题有着巨大的帮助。我建议研究一个被称为扣带皮层的神秘大脑区域如何指导我们如何处理奖励和做出决定，这可能会推动我们解决成瘾问题的进展。