( high when the monkey chose two drops of...)Attention shoppers: Researchers find neurons that encode the value of different goods

high when the monkey chose two drops of grape juice or when it chose six drops of apple juice (medium-high value). And the activity of the same neuron might be high when the monkey chose three drops of grape juice or when it chose 10 drops of apple juice (high value). This means that the activity of such OFC neurons encodes the value chosen by the monkey independently of the physical characteristics of the juice--its taste, quantity, etc.

Padoa-Schioppa also found that other neurons in the OFC encode the value of only one of the two juices offered to the monkey. Some neurons encoded the value of the grape juice, while other neurons encoded the value of the apple juice. "The monkey's choice may be based on the activity of these neurons," says Padoa-Schioppa.

An important aspect of the results is that neurons in the OFC encode the economic value of offered and chosen goods independently of the particular way the goods are offered to the monkey, and independently of the specific action the animal uses to signal its choice. For example, OFC neurons encoding the value of apples and oranges would do so regardless of whether the apple is offered on the right and the orange on the left, or vice versa.

"This result has broad implications for possible psychological models of economic choice," says Padoa-Schioppa. "It suggests that economic choice is, at its essence, a choice between goods as opposed to a choice between actions--such as reaching to the right to take the apple or to the left to take the orange."

This work follows a paper published in February in the journal Cognition by Padoa-Schioppa with collaborators Lucia Jandolo and Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. That behavioral study found that monkeys indeed make choices by assigning values to available foods. In the present study, Padoa-Schioppa and Assad identify the neurons in the OFC that correlate such values.

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Source:Harvard Medical School


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