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The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) plays a critical role in the regulation of complex behavior, but there is no consensus about the optimal conceptual framework for viewing its function. The author of this review proposes that concepts borrowed from economics and the science of decision making provide a useful construct for understanding the role of the VMPFC and the impairment in feedback-driven learning associated with lesions of the VMPFC.
The central idea is that the VMPFC encodes the current relative value of a stimulus or choice. Variables that influence this value include the internal state of the chooser, the presence and nature of other choices concurrently present, the expected value of a choice (weighted by both the uncert…