Neuroscience of Preference and Choice

Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms

Raymond J. Dolan, Tali Sharot

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780123814319
• eBook ISBN: 9780123814326
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Biological Sciences

One of the most pressing questions in neuroscience, psychology and economics today is how does the brain generate preferences and make choices? With a unique interdisciplinary approach, this volume is among the first to explore the cognitive and neural mechanisms mediating the generation of the preferences that guide choice. From preferences determining mundane purchases, to social preferences influencing mating choice, through to moral decisions, the authors adopt diverse approaches to answer the question. Chapters explore the instability of preferences and the common neural processes that occur across preferences. Edited by one of the world's most renowned cognitive neuroscientists, each chapter is authored by an expert in the field, with a host of international contributors.- Emphasis on common process underlying preference generation makes material applicable to a variety of disciplines – neuroscience, psychology, economics, law, philosophy, etc.- Offers specific focus on how preferences are generated to guide decision making, carefully examining one aspect of the broad field of neuroeconomics and complementing existing volumes- Features outstanding, international scholarship, with chapters written by an expert in the topic area

Part I

Mechanisms

Outline

Chapter 1 The Neurobiology of Preferences

Chapter 2 Models of Value and Choice

Chapter 3 Predicting Emotional Reactions: Mechanisms, Bias and Choice

Chapter 1

The Neurobiology of Preferences

Mkael Symmonds and Raymond J. Dolan, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology University College London, London

Publisher Summary

The neuroscience of choice and preference dates back to the nineteenth century, with the emergence of the idea of functional specialization as a fundamental organizational principle of the brain. The development of neuroimaging techniques—in particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)—has meant that questions related to choice and preference can now be addressed non-invasively in humans. There are important examples where choices do not accord with internal wants. An addict may perform an action in the present despite expressing a desire to avoid doing this very action on a prior occasion. A major conundrum when thinking about neurobiological mechanisms in decision-making is the fact that choices are often noisy or stochastic. A different network of regions in precuneus, left prefrontal, and temproparietal cortex reflected endogenous inequity aversion across subjects, illustrating that even within the context of a specific task, preferences for the same stimulus feature can be expressed in different regions and modulated in a distinct manner.

Preference; choice; neuroscience; neuroeconomics; decision-making; action; value

Outline

Introduction 4

The Neuroscience of Decision-Making 4

The Nature of Preferences 5

Concepts of Choice and Preference 6

Revealed Preferences or Behavioral Biases? 6

Competing Valuation Systems 7

Searching for a Hedonimeter 8

The Randomness of Choice 9

Different Types of Value? 10

Dynamic Changes in Preference 11

The Role of Neuroscientific Evidence 12

What are the Potential Neural Mechanisms Underlying Preference 12

Regionally-Specific Encoding of Intrinsic Value 13

A Change in Neural Sensitivity within a Brain Region 15

Distributed Encoding of Value by Neurotransmitters 18

Change in Neural Activity Coupled to Action 20

Change in Regional Connectivity and Modulation of Preference 21

Conclusion 22

Unravelling the mechanisms underlying choice behavior is a central aim in decision science. Choice is governed by our own internal likes and dislikes, or preferences. In this chapter we first provide a background history of neuroscientific investigation of choice behavior. We go on to discuss findings that raise questions as to the biological implementation of preference, findings that point to a need to relax strict economically-inspired definitions of preference. We next examine a range of plausible mechanisms by which preference might be represented in the brain, and discuss how choice can be modulated by physiological, pharmacological or direct neural manipulations. This in turn illustrates how decision-making processes can be parsed into distinct components supported by different, often competing, neurobiological mechanisms. We conclude that it is likely that multiple potential sites exist where choice can be influenced by endogenous or exogenous factors.

Introduction

Choice conjures the idea of a volitional or directed selection of desirable actions, motivated by internal likes and dislikes. Unsurprisingly, the conundrums raised by choice are center stage in philosophical and scientific debate since antiquity (Aristotle, 1998; MacPherson, 1968). Choice is generally envisaged as a conscious selection of alternatives, under an assumption that individuals possess “preferences,” or a predilection to make certain types of choice in specific situations. This realization is often thought to reflect the expression of either acquired or “hard-wired” drives that are expressed in a biological substrate. Thus, an individual with a preference for chocolate over lemon is considered to possess an “internal machinery” capable of representing this enhanced valuation of chocolate relative to lemon, a valuation that provides the basis for a consistent and rational selection between these two goods.

Traditional economic thinking relates preferences to a statement about well-being. An agent who expresses a particular choice is considered to be maximizing their own subjective “utility” or welfare. Every decision or choice is considered an expression of preference and in the “revealed preference” framework (Samuelson, 1938), choice and preference are synonymous. While revealed choices are ultimately the dependent variable for classical economics, understanding the neurobiology of preferences necessitates that we entertain a range of mechanisms by which human choices are generated, expressed and influenced.

The Neuroscience of Decision-Making

The neuroscience of choice and preference dates back to the nineteenth century, with the emergence of the idea of functional specialization as a fundamental organizational principle of the brain. While phrenologists attributed behavioral characteristics to the contours of the scalp (Gall & Spurzheim, 1818), the observation of specific and consistent behavioral deficits following localized brain damage led to the development of neurology as a medical speciality (Broca, 1865; Jackson, 1873). The tradition of inferring function from structural and electrophysiological perturbations has remained powerful, enabling a mapping of both primary sensory and motor systems (Penfield & Boldrey, 1937), complex cognitive processes such as language (Head, 1920; Ojemann, 1978), memory (Scoville & Milner, 1957) and, more recently, a mapping of areas important in decision-making, strategy selection and learning (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio & Anderson, 1994; Shallice & Burgess, 1991).

The early twentieth century heralded the birth of behavioral psychology, pioneered by the classic findings of Pavlov, Skinner, Tolman, Hull and others (Schultz & Schultz, 2007). This tradition provided insights into core processes mediating learning and choice, but was restricted in scope by the primitive methods available to study concurrent neurobiological activity during decision-making. In the 1960s, Olds and colleagues produced a startling finding that stimulation of specific brain loci in animals imbued behavior with apparent hedonic value. For example, self-stimulation experiments in rats showed they were disposed to compulsively press a lever to the exclusion of other hedonic behavioral options. Thus, a dramatic form of preference could be driven by electrical stimulation of the rats’ subcortical dopaminergic structures (Olds & Milner, 1954).

A refinement in neuroscientific techniques in the 1980s saw the emergence of single-unit recording methodologies. These revealed that activity of individual neurons in early visual areas could predict trial-by-trial choices of an animal in a random-dot motion discrimination experiment (Parker & Newsome, 1998). Such an approach provided the first direct link between neural activity at a single unit level and the expression of choice behavior. Subsequent studies have asked more sophisticated questions about the construction of value and choice in an economic framework. A key example is a report showing that a region of parietal cortex called LIP, expressed activity that correlated with the reward magnitude and probability (expected value) associated with an upcoming action (Platt & Glimcher, 1999).

The development of neuroimaging techniques, in particular functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has meant that questions related to choice and preference can now be addressed non-invasively in humans. Early neuroimaging studies of financial decision-making dissected out regions involved in processing monetary gain and loss (Elliott, Friston & Dolan, 2000; Thut, Schultz, Roelcke et al., 1997), as well as brain activation related to anticipation versus receipt of reward (Breiter, Aharon, Kahneman et al., 2001). More sophisticated studies have borrowed economically-inspired models of behavior to seek out a brain representation of key decision variables. Notable examples include a demonstration brain activity that tracks a Pascalian idea of a value representation constructed from a combination of amount and probability (Dreher, Kohn & Berman, 2006; Knutson, Taylor, Kaufman et al., 2005), to financial and ecological concepts of risk and uncertainty (Christopoulos, Tobler, Bossaerts et al., 2009; Mohr, Biele & Heekeren, 2010; Preuschoff, Bossaerts & Quartz, 2006), and the idea that anticipated temporal delay reduces the value of rewards (Kable & Glimcher, 2007; Pine, Seymour, Roiser et al., 2009).

The Nature of Preferences

Preferences can be thought of as biologically determined traits (Eysenck, 1990; Ebstein, 2006), but in reality they are dynamic and flexible, and indeed often inconsistent. The idea of preference is broad and diverse, encompassing a liking for different goods, a favoring of reward over punishment through to preferences for specific components of a decision (“decision variables”). The latter can encompass risk preference, impulsivity (the preference for delayed versus immediate goods) and social preferences (“other-regarding” preferences, altruism and fairness). Whether such preferences are convenient theoretical artefacts for classifying individual choice, or whether they relate to intrinsic biological processes and inter-individual differences is the subject of intense and wide-ranging programs of research. This breadth is evident in a facility to draw on human and animal psychology, neurobiology, economics, ecology and computational science, though a source of confusion can be each discipline’s different terminology, theory, experimental technique and hypothetical assumptions that color the literature. There are many excel...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contributors
• Part I: Mechanisms
• Part II: Contextual Factors
• Part III: Social Factors
• Part IV: Perceptual Factors
• Part V: Implications, Application and Future Direction
• Index