Brain topography
-
Adaptive behaviour requires an ability to obtain rewards by choosing between different risky options. Financial gambles can be used to study effective decision-making experimentally, and to distinguish processes involved in choice option evaluation from outcome feedback and other contextual factors. Here, we used a paradigm where participants evaluated 'mixed' gambles, each presenting a potential gain and a potential loss and an associated variable outcome probability. ⋯ Neural correlates of expected value representation were localized using fMRI to ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while the processing of other economic parameters was associated with distinct patterns across lateral prefrontal, cingulate, insula and occipital cortices including default-mode network and early visual areas. These multimodal data provide complementary evidence for distributed substrates of choice evaluation across multiple, predominantly cortical, brain systems wherein distinct regions are preferentially attuned to specific economic features. Our findings extend biologically-plausible models of risky decision-making while providing potential biomarkers of economic representations that can be applied to the study of deficits in motivational behaviour in neurological and psychiatric patients.