title: Value signals in the prefrontal cortex predict individual preferences across reward categories.
abstract: Humans can choose between fundamentally different options, such as watching a movie or going out for dinner. According to the utility concept, put forward by utilitarian philosophers and widely used in economics, this may be accomplished by mapping the value of different options onto a common scale, independent of specific option characteristics (Fehr and Rangel, 2011; Levy and Glimcher, 2012). If this is the case, value-related activity patterns in the brain should allow predictions of individual preferences across fundamentally different reward categories. We analyze fMRI data of the prefrontal cortex while subjects imagine the pleasure they would derive from items belonging to two distinct reward categories: engaging activities (like going out for drinks, daydreaming, or doing sports) and snack foods. Support vector machines trained on brain patterns related to one category reliably predict individual preferences of the other category and vice versa. Further, we predict preferences across participants. These findings demonstrate that prefrontal cortex value signals follow a common scale representation of value that is even comparable across individuals and could, in principle, be used to predict choice.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands, j.gross@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gross
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Woelbert
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sanae
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Okamoto-Barth
authors.affiliation: School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands, Center for Economic Studies, 81679 München, Germany, Institute for the Study of Labor, Schaumburg-Lippe-Strasse 5-9, 53113 Bonn, Germany, and.
authors.forename: Arno
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Riedl
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Goebel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D007206:Individuality; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward
keywords: choice prediction; common scale; decision making; subjective value; utility