Scientists Identify a Small Brain Structure Responsible for Making Decisions

Rebecca Lewis May 13, 2016

What makes you decide which food to eat for breakfast, what clothes to wear, or whether to go to work or not? Every day, we make many decisions - some of which tend to be complicated. And did you know that these decisions that we make are done by a very small structure in the brain?

Scientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that some of the neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) assign value to the options, while other neurons are related to making final choices.

"When we choose between an apple and a banana, some neurons assign a value to the apple, some neurons assign a value to the banana, and other neurons represent the choice outcome," said Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, PhD, the study’s senior investigator and an associate professor of neuroscience at the University.

"Taken together, these different groups of cells seem to form a neural circuit that generates economic decisions."

In the current study, the researchers examined how this neural circuit reorganizes when decisions are made in different circumstances.

"Think about the choices we make on a given day—between foods, whether to watch TV or read a book, or between different investments in our retirement funds. Some cells in the orbitofrontal cortex assign values to individual options, and other cells represent the choice outcome. Neurons that assign the value to individual options are called offer-value cells. But if we are choosing between different foods, an offer-value cell might represent the value of roasted chicken, whereas if we are choosing between different financial investments, the same offer-value cell might represent the value of a mutual fund."

Although individual neurons re-map to represent the value of different options, the overall organization of the neural circuit remains stable, the researchers said.

Their study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Source of this article:

Neuronal remapping and circuit persistence in economic decisions. Nature Neuroscience, Advance online publication