Encoding of marginal utility across time in the human brain.

Marginal utility theory prescribes the relationship between the objective property of the magnitude of rewards and their subjective value. Despite its pervasive influence, however, there is remarkably little direct empirical evidence for such a theory of value, let alone of its neurobiological basis. We show that human preferences in an intertemporal choice task are best described by a model that integrates marginally diminishing utility with temporal discounting. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that activity in the dorsal striatum encodes both the marginal utility of rewards, over and above that which can be described by their magnitude alone, and the discounting associated with increasing time. In addition, our data show that dorsal striatum may be involved in integrating subjective valuation systems inherent to time and magnitude, thereby providing an overall metric of value used to guide choice behavior. Furthermore, during choice, we show that anterior cingulate activity correlates with the degree of difficulty associated with dissonance between value and time. Our data support an integrative architecture for decision making, revealing the neural representation of distinct subcomponents of value that may contribute to impulsivity and decisiveness.

Contingency awareness in human aversive conditioning involves the middle frontal gyrus.

In contrast to the wealth of data describing the neural mechanisms underlying classical conditioning, we know remarkably little about the mechanisms involved in acquisition of explicit contingency awareness. Subjects variably acquire contingency awareness in classical conditioning paradigms, in which they are able to describe the temporal relationship between a conditioned cue and its outcome. Previous studies have implicated the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in the acquisition of explicit knowledge, although their specific roles remain unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track the trial-by-trial acquisition of explicit knowledge in a concurrent trace and delay conditioning paradigm. We show that activity in bilateral middle frontal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus correlates with the accuracy of explicit contingency awareness on each trial. In contrast, amygdala activation correlates with conditioned responses indexed by skin conductance responses (SCRs). These results demonstrate that brain regions known to be involved in other aspects of learning and memory also play a specific role, reflecting on each trial the acquisition and representation of contingency awareness.