Temporally dissociable contributions of human medial prefrontal subregions to reward-guided learning

摘要: In decision making, dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex show a sensitivity to key variables, such as reward prediction errors. It is unclear whether these signals reflect parallel processing of common synchronous input both regions, for example from mesocortical dopamine, or separate consecutive stages in processing. These two perspectives make distinct predictions about the relative timing feedback-related activity each question we address here. To reconstruct unique temporal contribution dorsomedial (dmPFC) ventromedial (vmPFC) simultaneously measured EEG human subjects, developed novel trialwise fMRI-informed analysis that allows dissociating correlated overlapping sources. We vmPFC uniquely contributes sustained activation profile shortly after outcome presentation, whereas dmPFC later more peaked pattern. This dissociation expressed mainly alpha band signal, which contrasts with theta based signal. Thus, our data reward-related responses have time courses spectral profiles, findings support functional roles reward-processing network.