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The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in the pursuit of happiness and more specific rewards
Last post 06-24-2008 2:59 AM by paulcarson. 0 replies.
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06-24-2008 2:59 AM
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paulcarson
  - Joined on 08-01-2007
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The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in the pursuit of happiness and more specific rewards
Kathryn
A. Burke, Theresa M. Franz, Danielle N. Miller & Geoffrey Schoenbaum
Cues that reliably predict rewards trigger the thoughts and emotions
normally evoked by those rewards. Humans and other animals will work, often
quite hard, for these cues. This is termed conditioned reinforcement. The
ability to use conditioned reinforcers to guide our behaviour is normally
beneficial; however, it can go awry. For example, corporate icons, such as
McDonald's Golden Arches, influence consumer behaviour in powerful and
sometimes surprising ways, and drug-associated cues trigger relapse to drug
seeking in addicts and animals exposed to addictive drugs, even after
abstinence or extinction. Yet, despite their prevalence, it is not known
how conditioned reinforcers control human or other animal behaviour. One
possibility is that they act through the use of the specific rewards they
predict; alternatively, they could control behaviour directly by activating
emotions that are independent of any specific reward. In other words, the
Golden Arches may drive business because they evoke thoughts of hamburgers and
fries, or instead, may be effective because they also evoke feelings of hunger
or happiness. Moreover, different brain circuits could support conditioned
reinforcement mediated by thoughts of specific outcomes versus more general affective
information. Here we have attempted to address these questions in rats. Rats
were trained to learn that different cues predicted different rewards using
specialized conditioning procedures that controlled whether the cues evoked
thoughts of specific outcomes or general affective representations common to
different outcomes. Subsequently, these rats were given the opportunity to
press levers to obtain short and otherwise unrewarded presentations of these
cues. We found that rats were willing to work for cues that evoked either
outcome-specific or general affective representations. Furthermore the
orbitofrontal cortex, a prefrontal region important for adaptive
decision-making4, was critical for the former but not for the latter form of
conditioned reinforcement.
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