Distributed neural representation of saliency controlled value and category during anticipation of rewards and punishments

Zhihao Zhang, Jennifer Fanning, Daniel B. Ehrlich, Wenting Chen, Daeyeol Lee and Ifat Levy ()
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Zhihao Zhang: Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale University
Jennifer Fanning: Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale School of Medicine
Daniel B. Ehrlich: Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale University
Wenting Chen: Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale School of Medicine
Daeyeol Lee: Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale University
Ifat Levy: Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale University

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract An extensive literature from cognitive neuroscience examines the neural representation of value, but interpretations of these existing results are often complicated by the potential confound of saliency. At the same time, recent attempts to dissociate neural signals of value and saliency have not addressed their relationship with category information. Using a multi-category valuation task that incorporates rewards and punishments of different nature, we identify distributed neural representation of value, saliency, and category during outcome anticipation. Moreover, we reveal category encoding in multi-voxel blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity patterns of the vmPFC and the striatum that coexist with value signals. These results help clarify ambiguities regarding value and saliency encoding in the human brain and their category independence, lending strong support to the neural “common currency” hypothesis. Our results also point to potential novel mechanisms of integrating multiple aspects of decision-related information.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02080-4

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