Neural Economics and Biological Substrates of Valuation

神经经济学和估值的生物基础

• 批准号: 6988518
• 负责人: P Read Montague
• 金额: $ 33.99万
• 依托单位: BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-12-05 至 2008-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6988518
• 关键词: appetite; behavioral /social science research tag; choice; clinical research; computational neuroscience; decision making; dopamine; functional magnetic resonance imaging; goal oriented behavior; handedness; human subject; neural information processing; psychological values; reinforcer

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Ongoing economic evaluation is a central function for any system that must operate with limited, finite resources, that is, all mobile creatures. The need for neural valuation mechanisms arises from the sheer breadth and variety of information available to a mobile creature's nervous system, and the fact that sensory stimuli and possible behavioral output must be prioritized. This presents a fundamental information-processing problem: vastly different stimuli and behavioral output must be placed on some common valuation scale. Without internal valuation systems in the nervous system, a creature would be unable to assess the relative value of intrinsically different events like drinking water, smelling food, scanning for predators, sitting quietly in the sun, and so forth. To decide on an appropriate behavior, the nervous system must estimate the value of each of these potential actions or stimuli, convert it to a common scale (currency), and use this scale to determine a course of action. This issue has long been appreciated by behavioral psychologists and economists; however, only recently have the underlying neural substrates been addressed experimentally in humans. Midbrain dopamine systems and the target neural structures to which they project have now been identified as participating in the valuation of future rewarding events. In particular, computational work has shown that a subset of these dopamine neurons encode and distribute a prediction error signal representing the ongoing difference between actual reward and predicted reward. This prediction error model of dopaminergic function has now led to behavioral models that predict human behavior on sequential decision-making tasks. These tasks ask the question: "How do humans value ongoing changes in rewarding stimuli?", a question with important implications for drug abuse. However, there has been no biological measure to correlate with these model-based behavioral predictions. The long-term goal of this proposal is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the execution of sequential decision tasks to probe the brain responses that correlate with human performance. This work will provide fundamental insights into valuations mechanisms present in human brains.

描述（由申请人提供）：对于任何必须以有限的、有限的资源（即所有移动生物）运行的系统来说，持续的经济评估是一项核心功能。对神经评估机制的需求源于移动生物神经系统可获得的信息的广泛性和多样性，以及必须优先考虑感官刺激和可能的行为输出的事实。这提出了一个基本的信息处理问题：必须将截然不同的刺激和行为输出置于某种共同的评估尺度上。如果没有神经系统的内部评估系统，生物将无法评估本质上不同的事件的相对价值，例如饮用水、闻食物的味道、扫描捕食者、安静地坐在阳光下等等。为了决定适当的行为，神经系统必须估计每个潜在行为或刺激的价值，将其转换为通用尺度（货币），并使用该尺度来确定行动方案。这个问题长期以来一直受到行为心理学家和经济学家的重视。然而，直到最近才在人类身上通过实验解决了潜在的神经基质问题。中脑多巴胺系统及其投射的目标神经结构现已被确定为参与未来奖励事件的评估。特别是，计算工作表明，这些多巴胺神经元的子集编码并分发代表实际奖励和预测奖励之间持续差异的预测误差信号。这种多巴胺能功能的预测误差模型现已产生了预测人类在顺序决策任务中的行为的行为模型。这些任务提出的问题是：“人类如何评价奖励刺激的持续变化？”，这个问题对药物滥用具有重要影响。然而，还没有生物学测量方法与这些基于模型的行为预测相关联。该提案的长期目标是在执行顺序决策任务期间使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来探测与人类表现相关的大脑反应。这项工作将为人类大脑中存在的估值机制提供基本见解。