Abstract
Consistent decisions are intuitively desirable and theoretically important for utility maximization. Neuroeconomics has established the neurobiological substrate of value representation, but brain regions that provide input to this network is less explored. The constructed-preference tradition within behavioral decision research gives a critical role to associative cognitive processes, suggesting a hippocampal role in making consistent decisions. We compared the performance of 31 patients with mediotemporal lobe (MTL) epilepsy and hippocampal lesions, 30 patients with extratemporal lobe epilepsy, and 30 healthy controls on two tasks: binary choices between candy bars based on their preferences and a number-comparison control task where the larger number is chosen. MTL patients made more inconsistent choices than the other two groups for the value-based choice but not the number-comparison task. These inconsistencies correlated with the volume of compromised hippocampal tissue. These results add to increasing evidence on a critical involvement of the MTL in preference construction and value-based choices.
Highlights
Decision neuroscience has made significant progress in identifying neurobiological correlates of value representations using paradigms involving simple choices between two stimuli based on underlying preferences[1,2]
We provide support that brain regions associated with memory-related associative processes play a critical role in value-based decision-making
Hippocampal lesions were associated with an increase in intransitive value-based choices, and the degree of intransitivity is related to magnitude of the damage to the hippocampus (LDI)
Summary
Decision neuroscience has made significant progress in identifying neurobiological correlates of value representations using paradigms involving simple choices between two stimuli based on underlying preferences[1,2]. Work motivated by the hippocampus’ involvement in imagining future experiences[12,13] find that participants asked to imagine future events make more patient value-related decisions across time, which correlates with stronger activity in a set of brain regions including the hippocampus[14]. Impairment of these structures relates to more impatient choices, as shown in patients with subjective cognitive impairments regarded as a pre-stage of neurodegenerative disorders[15]. Work that established the role of the ventromedial frontal region as crucial in the value network used this method: Patients with damage in these areas perform poorly in value-related decisions compared both to healthy controls, as well as patients with lesions elsewhere in the frontal cortex[16,17]
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