Neuropsychologia
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Counterfactual feelings of regret occur when people make comparisons between an actual outcome and a better outcome that would have occurred under a different choice. We investigated the choices of individuals with damage to the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the lateral orbital frontal cortex (LOFC) to see whether their emotional responses were sensitive to regret. Participants made choices between gambles, each with monetary outcomes. ⋯ VMPFC patients tended to make worse choices, and, contrary to our predictions, they reported emotions that were sensitive to regret comparisons. In contrast, LOFC patients made better choices, but reported emotional reactions that were insensitive to regret comparisons. We suggest the VMPFC is involved in the association between choices and anticipated emotions that guide future choices, while the LOFC is involved in experienced emotions that follow choices, emotions that may signal the need for behavioral change.
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Spatial position of an object can be represented in the human brain based on two types of reference frames: allocentric and egocentric. The perception/action hypothesis of the ventral/dorsal visual stream proposed that allocentric reference frame codes object positions relative to another object/background subserving conscious perception of the external world while egocentric reference frame codes object positions relative to the observer's body/body parts subserving goal-directed actions towards the objects. ⋯ Moreover, the pattern of interaction between the two frames was different between deaf and hearing groups: irrelevant egocentric positions caused more interference to allocentric processing than vice versa in the hearing group while the two frames caused equivalent interference to each other in the deaf group. Further control experiments suggested that the above effects were not caused by the impaired sense of balance in the congenitally deaf participants (via open-loop pointing test), and was independent of whether the speed of allocentric and egocentric processing was equivalent or not in the hearing group.