The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex computes task-invariant relative subjective value for self and other
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Ruonan Jia; Matthew Piva; Ifat Levy; Steve W. C. Chang; Amrita Nair; Kayla Velnoskey
- Source
- eLife
eLife, Vol 8 (2019)
- Subject
- Adult
Male
0301 basic medicine
QH301-705.5
Science
Decision Making
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal Cortex
Intertemporal choice
Choice Behavior
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
03 medical and health sciences
subjective value
0302 clinical medicine
medicine
Humans
dmPFC
Biology (General)
Invariant (mathematics)
Neural correlates of consciousness
General Immunology and Microbiology
General Neuroscience
risky choice
fMRI
Univariate
intertemporal choice
General Medicine
Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Healthy Volunteers
Behavioral modeling
neuroeconomics
030104 developmental biology
medicine.anatomical_structure
Medicine
Female
Neuroeconomics
Psychology
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Research Article
Neuroscience
Human
Cognitive psychology
- Language
- ISSN
- 2050-084X
Few studies have addressed the neural computations underlying decisions made for others despite the importance of this ubiquitous behavior. Using participant-specific behavioral modeling with univariate and multivariate fMRI approaches, we investigated the neural correlates of decision-making for self and other in two independent tasks, including intertemporal and risky choice. Modeling subjective valuation indicated that participants distinguished between themselves and others with dissimilar preferences. Activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was consistently modulated by relative subjective value. Multi-voxel pattern analysis indicated that activity in the dmPFC uniquely encoded relative subjective value and generalized across self and other and across both tasks. Furthermore, agent cross-decoding accuracy between self and other in the dmPFC was related to self-reported social attitudes. These findings indicate that the dmPFC emerges as a medial prefrontal node that utilizes a task-invariant mechanism for computing relative subjective value for self and other.