PSY 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Prefrontal Cortex, Striatum, Phineas Gage

• School: University of Oregon
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 449
• Professor: Christina Karns

Document Summary

Value-based decision making: dopamine reward processing, role of emotion. Social decision making: overlap with non-social decision making, effects of orbitofrontal decision making. Neuroeconomics: goal is to build a neurological model of decision making in economic environments, predicts people"s value-based decisions. Rats and lever study rats would rather stimulate the brain than eat. Dopamine provides and error prediction signal to aid in goal-directed behavior. Positive prediction error: e. g. expecting 1 drop of juice, and getting 2 (getting more than expected) Negative prediction error: e. g. expecting 2 drops of juice and getting 1 (getting less than expected) Brain activity predicts purchases: ventral striatum activated when viewing highly desirable products, part of reward system. Insula activated when viewing high prices: linked to anticipation of pain, medial prefrontal cortex activated when viewing reasonable prices. Participants who behaved more rationally showed a higher response in the orbitofrontal cortex. Social vs. non-social decision: extended common currency schema, social valuations specific schema.