Neural Substrates Mediating the Utility of Instrumental Divergence
- Kaitlyn G. Norton, Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, United States
- Mimi Liljeholm, Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, United States
AbstractWe assessed the neural substrates mediating a recently demonstrated preference for environments with high levels of instrumental divergence – a formal index of flexible operant control. Across choice scenarios, participants chose between gambling environments that differed in terms of both instrumental divergence and expected monetary pay-offs. Using model-based fMRI, we found that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex scaled with a divergence-based measure of expected utility that reflected the value of both divergence and monetary reward. Implications for a neural common currency for information theoretic and economic variables are discussed.