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J Neurophysiol 97: 1621-1632, 2007. First published November 22, 2006; doi:10.1152/jn.00745.2006
0022-3077/07 $8.00

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Reward Value Coding Distinct From Risk Attitude-Related Uncertainty Coding in Human Reward Systems

¹Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; ²Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom; and ³Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California

Submitted 19 July 2006; accepted in final form 19 November 2006

When deciding between different options, individuals are guided by the expected (mean) value of the different outcomes and by the associated degrees of uncertainty. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain activations coding the key decision parameters of expected value (magnitude and probability) separately from uncertainty (statistical variance) of monetary rewards. Participants discriminated behaviorally between stimuli associated with different expected values and uncertainty. Stimuli associated with higher expected values elicited monotonically increasing activations in distinct regions of the striatum, irrespective of different combinations of magnitude and probability. Stimuli associated with higher uncertainty (variance) elicited increasing activations in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Uncertainty-related activations covaried with individual risk aversion in lateral orbitofrontal regions and risk-seeking in more medial areas. Furthermore, activations in expected value-coding regions in prefrontal cortex covaried differentially with uncertainty depending on risk attitudes of individual participants, suggesting that separate prefrontal regions are involved in risk aversion and seeking. These data demonstrate the distinct coding in key reward structures of the two basic and crucial decision parameters, expected value, and uncertainty.

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