From facial cue to dinner for two: the neural substrates of personal choice.
The current experiment examined the neural substrates of response selection, comparing conditions that required participants to make criterion-free selections from sets of same-sex faces (i.e., inconsequential decision) to choosing a dinner date from opposite-sex faces (i.e., consequential decision). In each of these tasks, either a single face (i.e., no choice) or two or three faces (i.e., free choice) appeared for selection. The results revealed that regions of dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) and parietal cortex bilaterally, as well as an area along the medial surface of the superior frontal gyrus, were activated by both consequential and inconsequential decisions, thereby providing evidence for a common selection network. Consequential decisions were further indexed by activation of the insula/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA 47) and the paracingulate gyrus (BA 32). The implications of these findings for current accounts of response selection and social-cognitive functioning are considered.
Turk
David J
DJ
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. david.j.turk@dartmouth.edu
Banfield
Jane F
JF
Walling
Bobbi R
BR
Heatherton
Todd F
TF
Grafton
Scott T
ST
Handy
Todd C
TC
Gazzaniga
Michael S
MS
Macrae
C Neil
CN
D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012919:Social Behavior