Decision making: How the past guides the future in frontal cortex

Decision Making and Reward in Frontal Cortex

Patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex (PFC)--especially the ventral and medial parts of PFC--often show a marked inability to make choices that meet their needs and goals. These decision-making impairments often reflect both a deficit in learning concerning the consequences of a choice, as well as deficits in the ability to adapt future choices based on experienced value of the current ...

Functional specialization of the primate frontal cortex during decision making.

Economic theories of decision making are based on the principle of utility maximization, and reinforcement-learning theory provides computational algorithms that can be used to estimate the overall reward expected from alternative choices. These formal models not only account for a large range of behavioral observations in human and animal decision makers, but also provide useful tools for inve...

Perceptual Learning and Decision-Making in Human Medial Frontal Cortex

The dominant view that perceptual learning is accompanied by changes in early sensory representations has recently been challenged. Here we tested the idea that perceptual learning can be accounted for by reinforcement learning involving changes in higher decision-making areas. We trained subjects on an orientation discrimination task involving feedback over 4 days, acquiring fMRI data on the f...

Frontal Cortex and Reward-Guided Learning and Decision-Making

Reward-guided decision-making and learning depends on distributed neural circuits with many components. Here we focus on recent evidence that suggests four frontal lobe regions make distinct contributions to reward-guided learning and decision-making: the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and adjacent medial orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and the...

Mechanisms for Stochastic Decision Making in the Primate Frontal Cortex: Single-neuron Recording and Circuit Modeling