Decision making and affective processing

决策的有效性通常是通过它是否带来有回报的结果来衡量的。完毕 在过去的十年里，不同的研究项目已经确定了不同的大脑系统，这些系统有助于 决策和奖励的评估。而功能特定区域的个性化 在这些系统中，认知神经科学仍然是一个活跃和持续的组成部分，相对较少 人们一直致力于阐明它们之间的相互作用。该项目将调查如何奖励 信息改变了用于决策的大脑系统的功能属性，通过组合 功能磁共振成像(FMRI)、颅内电生理和行为研究。 这个项目有四个具体目标。首先，它将确定交付点状货币的后果 奖励取决于随后激活作为决策基础的大脑系统。这些实验将会 测试奖励对相关的外侧前额叶区域有短暂抑制作用的假设 与决策，通过比较绩效依赖和绩效独立的效果 与其他情感刺激的奖励。其次，它将调查决策者如何 合并或忽略外部建议，这些建议通过以下方式确认或驳斥其先前的决定 系统地调整推荐的预测性以获得回报的实验 决策结果。分析的关键区域包括额叶、眶前叶和扣带回。第三, 我们将研究决策者如何在两个经常对立的因素之间进行权衡：风险 和奖励。在许多情况下，通过推迟判断，人们付出了机会成本(例如，通过放弃 获得高额回报的机会)，以便做出更准确和更有信心的决定。这些实验 将评估观察员如何管理这些费用，并将岛屿和轨道前缘区域作为关键地点。 第四个也是最终目标将评估奖励效果的相对时间和空间特异性。 前额叶系统通过使用颅内电生理学。它的实验将利用 改进的电生理学时间分辨率以表征激活的相对时间 整个前额叶皮质都与关于奖励的决定有关。他们还将提供有关以下方面的新数据 眼眶前额叶皮质的功能，这是一个经常难以使用功能磁共振成像的区域。 这些实验将对理解人们如何做出决定产生重要的影响， 设定目标，确定刺激因素的偏好。对这些过程的更好理解将导致 进一步改进神经和精神疾病的临床治疗，其特点是 执行功能、行为选择或刺激评估方面的损害(例如，额叶损伤， 精神分裂症。帕金森氏症)。

The efficacy of decision making is often measured by whether or not it leads to rewarding outcomes. Over the past decade, separate research programs have identified separate brain systems that contribute to decision making and to the evaluation of rewards. While the individuation of functionally specific regions within these systems remains an active and ongoing component of cognitive neuroscience, relatively little work has been devoted toward elucidating their interactions. This Project will investigate how reward information alters the functional properties of brain systems for decision making, through a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), intracranial electrophysiological, and behavioral studies. This Project has four specific aims. First, it will determine the consequences of delivery of punctate monetary rewards upon the subsequent activation of brain systems underlying decision making. The experiments will test the hypothesis that rewards have a transient inhibitory effect upon lateral prefrontal regions associated with decision making, through comparison of the effects of performance-dependent and performance-independent rewards with those of other affective stimuli. Second, it will investigate how decision makers incorporate or ignore external recommendations that confirm or refute their prior decisions through experiments that systematically adjust the predictiveness of recommendations in obtaining rewarding decision outcomes. Key regions for the analysis include frontopolar, orbitofrontal and cingulate areas. Third, we will study how decision makers regulate tradeoffs between two factors that are often in opposition: risk and reward. In many situations, by delaying judgment, people pay opportunity costs (e.g., by passing up opportunities for large rewards) in order to make more accurate and confident decisions. The experiments will evaluate how observers manage these costs with insular and orbitofrontal regions targeted as key sites. The fourth and final aim will evaluate the relative timing and spatial specificity of reward effects upon prefrontal systems through the use of intracranial electrophysiology. Its experiments will take advantage of the improved temporal resolution of electrophysiology to characterize the relative timing of activation throughout prefrontal cortex associated with decisions about rewards. They will also provide new data about the function of orbitofrontal cortex, an area often difficult to image using fMRI. These experiments will have important consequences for the understanding of how people make decisions, set goals, and determine preferences among stimuli. A better understanding of these processes will lead to further improvements in clinical remediation of neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in executive function, behavioral selection, or stimulus valuation (e.g., frontal lobe damage, schizophrenia. Parkinson's disease).