Skip to main content
Search

Or 34,00 After 66% tax deduction

I make a monthly donation I make an IFI donation
Research, science & health

Four core properties of the human brain valuation system demonstrated in intracranial signals

Published on: 16/04/2020 Reading time: 1 min
Four core properties of the human brain valuation system demonstrated in intracranial signals
Retour à la recherche

Estimating the value of alternative options is a key process in decision-making. Human functional magnetic resonance imaging and monkey electrophysiology studies have identified brain regions, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), composing a value system.

In the present study, in an effort to bridge across species and techniques, we investigated the neural representation of value ratings in 36 people with epilepsy, using intracranial electroencephalography.

We found that subjective value was positively reflected in both vmPFC and lOFC high-frequency activity, plus several other brain regions, including the hippocampus. We then demonstrated that subjective value could be decoded (1) in pre-stimulus activity, (2) for various categories of items, (3) even during a distractive task and (4) as both linear and quadratic signals (encoding both value and confidence). Thus, our findings specify key functional properties of neural value signals (anticipation, generality, automaticity, quadraticity), which might provide insights into human irrational choice behaviors.

Sources

Four core properties of the human brain valuation system demonstrated in intracranial signals, Nature Neurosciences 2020.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0615-9

Our news on the subject

La bibliothèque de Babel
Mental Time Travel: A New Case of Autobiographical Hypermnesia
Remembering past events in minute detail, revisiting them methodically, and reliving past emotions—this is the peculiarity of people with an exceptional memory of their own lives, known as autobiographical hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia. This...
08.28.2025 Research, science & health
Crédit : Ana Yael.
An International Database to Better Understand Dreams
In an article published in Nature Communications, researchers from 37 scientific institutions—including Paris Brain Institute—unveil the DREAM database: an ambitious project designed to centralize, share, and standardize data from research on sleep...
08.14.2025 Research, science & health
Le cortex moteur
Origin of Lance-Adams Syndrome Finally Elucidated
First described 60 years ago, chronic myoclonus following cerebral anoxia is now known as Lance-Adams syndrome. This is a severe disorder whose mechanisms were, until now, poorly understood. Geoffroy Vellieux, Vincent Navarro, and their colleagues at...
06.16.2025 Research, science & health
Tiré de New Theory of Colours de Mary Gartside, 1808
Aphantasia Might Be Linked to Alterations in Brain Connectivity
Thanks to 7T fMRI, researchers from Paris Brain Institute and NeuroSpin, the CEA's neuroimaging centre, are exploring the neural substrate of visual imagery at very high resolution for the first time. Their results, publiés [i] in Cortex, pave the...
06.06.2025 Research, science & health
Le développement du cerveau a une part d’aléatoire
The stochastic aspect of brain development
Although every person’s personality is the result of genetic and environmental factors, these are not the only factors at play. Bassem Hassan and his team at Paris Brain Institute have discovered that, in fruit flies (drosophila), individuality also...
05.12.2025 Research, science & health
Un iceberg
The ICEBERG cohort, 10 years of collective scientific and medical mobilization
The ICEBERG cohort, initiated 10 years ago, is interested in studying factors predictive of the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease.
05.15.2025 Research, science & health
See all our news