scholarly journals Mistakes were made: Neural mechanisms for the adaptive control of action initiation by the medial prefrontal cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 104-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Laubach ◽  
Marcelo S. Caetano ◽  
Nandakumar S. Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Control ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Action Initiation

scholarly journals Retrieval practice facilitates memory updating by enhancing and differentiating medial prefrontal cortex representations

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhifang Ye ◽  
Liang Shi ◽  
Anqi Li ◽  
Chuansheng Chen ◽  
Gui Xue
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Retrieval Practice ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Final Test ◽  
Memory Updating ◽  
Practice Condition ◽  
Memory Integration

Updating old memories with new, more current information is critical for human survival, yet the neural mechanisms for memory updating in general and the effect of retrieval practice in particular are poorly understood. Using a three-day A-B/A-C memory updating paradigm, we found that compared to restudy, retrieval practice could strengthen new A-C memories and reduce old A-B memory intrusion, but did not suppress A-B memories. Neural activation pattern analysis revealed that compared to restudy, retrieval practice led to stronger target representation in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during the final test. Critically, it was only under the retrieval practice condition that the MPFC showed strong and comparable competitor evidence for both correct and incorrect trials during final test, and that the MPFC target representation during updating was predictive of subsequent memory. These results suggest that retrieval practice is able to facilitate memory updating by strongly engaging MPFC mechanisms in memory integration, differentiation and consolidation.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms of economic commitment in the human medial prefrontal cortex

eLife ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Tsetsos ◽  
Valentin Wyart ◽  
S Paul Shorkey ◽  
Christopher Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Financial Return ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
Decision Biases ◽  
Stimulus Value ◽  
Over Time

Neurobiologists have studied decisions by offering successive, independent choices between goods or gambles. However, choices often have lasting consequences, as when investing in a house or choosing a partner. Here, humans decided whether to commit (by acceptance or rejection) to prospects that provided sustained financial return. BOLD signals in the rostral medial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC) encoded stimulus value only when acceptance or rejection was deferred into the future, suggesting a role in integrating value signals over time. By contrast, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) encoded stimulus value only when participants rejected (or deferred accepting) a prospect. dACC BOLD signals reflected two decision biases–to defer commitments to later, and to weight potential losses more heavily than gains–that (paradoxically) maximised reward in this task. These findings offer fresh insights into the pressures that shape economic decisions, and the computation of value in the medial prefrontal cortex.

scholarly journals Self-Positivity or Self-Negativity as a Function of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 264
Author(s):  
Alla Yankouskaya ◽  
Jie Sui
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Univariate Analysis ◽  
Region Of Interest ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Neural Mechanisms

Self and emotions are key motivational factors of a person strivings for health and well-being. Understanding neural mechanisms supporting the relationship between these factors bear far-reaching implications for mental health disorders. Recent work indicates a substantial overlap between self-relevant and emotion information processing and has proposed the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) as one shared neural signature. However, the precise cognitive and neural mechanisms represented by the MPFC in investigations of self- and emotion-related processing are largely unknown. Here we examined whether the neural underpinnings of self-related processing in the MPFC link to positive or negative emotions. We collected fMRI data to test the distinct and shared neural circuits of self- and emotion-related processing while participants performed personal (self, friend, or stranger) and emotion (happy, sad, or neutral) associative matching tasks. By exploiting tight control over the factors that determine the effects of self-relevance and emotions (positive: Happy vs. neutral; negative: Sad vs. neutral), our univariate analysis revealed that the ventral part of the MPFC (vmPFC), which has established involvement in self-prioritisation effects, was not recruited in the negative emotion prioritisation effect. In contrast, there were no differences in brain activity between the effects of positive emotion- and self-prioritisation. These results were replicated by both region of interest (ROI)-based analysis in the vmPFC and the seed- to voxel functional connectivity analysis between the MPFC and the rest of the brain. The results suggest that the prioritisation effects for self and positive emotions are tightly linked together, and the MPFC plays a large role in discriminating between positive and negative emotions in relation to self-relevance.

Neural mechanisms resolving exploitation-exploration dilemmas in the medial prefrontal cortex

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 369 (6507) ◽  
pp. eabb0184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Domenech ◽  
Sylvain Rheims ◽  
Etienne Koechlin
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Electrophysiological Recordings

Everyday life often requires arbitrating between pursuing an ongoing action plan by possibly adjusting it versus exploring a new action plan instead. Resolving this so-called exploitation-exploration dilemma involves the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Using human intracranial electrophysiological recordings, we discovered that neural activity in the ventral mPFC infers and tracks the reliability of the ongoing plan to proactively encode upcoming action outcomes as either learning signals or potential triggers to explore new plans. By contrast, the dorsal mPFC exhibits neural responses to action outcomes, which results in either improving or abandoning the ongoing plan. Thus, the mPFC resolves the exploitation-exploration dilemma through a two-stage, predictive coding process: a proactive ventromedial stage that constructs the functional signification of upcoming action outcomes and a reactive dorsomedial stage that guides behavior in response to action outcomes.

scholarly journals Author response: Neural mechanisms of economic commitment in the human medial prefrontal cortex

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Tsetsos ◽  
Valentin Wyart ◽  
S Paul Shorkey ◽  
Christopher Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Author Response

scholarly journals Neural bases of risky decisions involving nicotine vapor versus monetary reward

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priyamvada Modak ◽  
Christian Hutslar ◽  
Rebecca Polk ◽  
Emily Atkinson ◽  
Lindsey Fisher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Construct Validity ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Human Studies ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Gambling Task ◽  
Substantial Effort ◽  
Heavy Smokers

AbstractSubstantial effort has gone into neuroimaging studies of neural mechanisms underlying addiction. Human studies of smoking typically either give monetary reward during an fMRI task or else allow subjects to smoke outside the scanner, after the session. This raises a fundamental issue of construct validity, as it is unclear whether the same neural mechanisms process decisions about nicotine that process decisions about money. To address this, we developed a novel MR-compatible nicotine vaping device, such that access to nicotine vapor could be controlled and monitored. We recruited heavy smokers to perform a gambling task with nicotine and monetary reward on separate days. This allowed a direct comparison between the neural mechanisms of choosing and receiving immediate drug vs. monetary reward. We found substantial differences in the neural mechanisms that underlie risky choices about money vs. drug reward, including a reversal of the well-known error effects in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Neural Representation of Subjective Value Under Risk and Ambiguity

2010 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 1036-1047 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ifat Levy ◽  
Jason Snell ◽  
Amy J. Nelson ◽  
Aldo Rustichini ◽  
Paul W. Glimcher
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Risk Aversion ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ambiguity Aversion ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Common Mechanism ◽  
Common System ◽  
Subjective Value

Risk and ambiguity are two conditions in which the consequences of possible outcomes are not certain. Under risk, the probabilities of different outcomes can be estimated, whereas under ambiguity, even these probabilities are not known. Although most people exhibit at least some aversion to both risk and ambiguity, the degree of these aversions is largely uncorrelated across subjects, suggesting that risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are distinct phenomena. Previous studies have shown differences in brain activations for risky and ambiguous choices and have identified neural mechanisms that may mediate transitions from conditions of ambiguity to conditions of risk. Unknown, however, is whether the value of risky and ambiguous options is necessarily represented by two distinct systems or whether a common mechanism can be identified. To answer this question, we compared the neural representation of subjective value under risk and ambiguity. fMRI was used to track brain activation while subjects made choices regarding options that varied systematically in the amount of money offered and in either the probability of obtaining that amount or the level of ambiguity around that probability. A common system, consisting of at least the striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex, was found to represent subjective value under both conditions.

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