Choosing between personal values: The Pavlovian substrates of intrinsic preferences

Abstract

Several brain circuits interact in computing the value of choices between options, as when we express our preference between a set of available consumer goods. Here, we used a procedure developed in functional neuroimaging studies of consumer choice to identify the neural substrates activated by choosing between values that, when put into practice, can give meaning to one's life, such as achievement, community, tradition, or religion, and are unrelated to material needs or financial security. In a first sample (N=18), instead of the neural substrates usually associated with choice between consumer goods, we found activation of the amygdala, a limbic system structure which presides over assignment of values to stimuli according to immediate affective experience and promotes responses according to their association with potential rewards. This unexpected finding was replicated in a second independent sample (N=18). These results are consistent with views arguing for the existential nature of values that give meaning to one's life here and now, in contrast to maximizing long-term utility.

The gradient model of brain organization in decisions involving ‘empathy for pain’

“…This recruitment has been interpreted by some, including ourselves, as the neural correlate of psychic pain (O’Connor, 2012; Labek et al, 2017), following consistent findings in several studies (Gündel, O’Connor, Littrell, Fort, & Lane, 2003; Kersting et al, 2009; Labek et al, 2017). However, this area is also recruited together with vmPFC by studies of subjective preference in the appetitive domain (Clithero & Rangel, 2014; Viviani et al, 2019). A more general proposal about the function of this area is attentional redirection in the presence of stimuli of behavioural significance (Pearson, Heilbronner, Barack, Hayden, & Platt, 2011; Leech & Sharp, 2014).…”

Segregation, connectivity, and gradients of deactivation in neural correlates of evidence in social decision making

“…Second, when participants make consistent choices, and there are no misses, then the difference and sum of scores regressors are orthogonal. This fact is difficult to prove in general, but may easily be checked directly for a given number of trials (the Matlab code to do this is provided in Viviani et al 2019). The orthogonality follows from the fact that each picture is presented in association with all other pictures.…”