Neural Correlates of Value are Intrinsically History Dependent

Abstract

A central finding in decision neuroscience is that BOLD activity in several regions, such as ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, is correlated with the subjective value of the option being considered, and that it can predict choices out of sample, even at the population-level. Here we show that these BOLD value-correlates are intrinsically history dependent: if the subjective value of the last offer was high, the signal on the current trial will be lower, and vice versa. In terms of basic neuroscience, these results support theories of efficient coding that would predict this form of history dependence. In terms of practical application, we find that choice does not exhibit the same history dependence and hence neural prediction studies that use univariate signals from regions of interest will have systematic errors in prediction unless these history effects are removed. We illustrate a whole brain prediction approach that accomplishes this.