Brain regions involved in the learning and application of reward rules in a two-deck gambling task.

Decision-making involves the ability to choose between competing actions that are associated with uncertain benefits and penalties. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which mimics real-life decision-making, involves learning a reward-punishment rule over multiple trials. Patients with damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) show deficits learning these rules, although this performance deficit is not exclusively associated with VMPFC damage. In this study, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the roles of prefrontal cortex regions involved in rule learning and rule application in healthy adults using an adapted version of the Iowa Gambling Task. Participants (N=20) were asked to infer rules over series of 16 trials in a two-deck card game. Rewards were given on each trial and punishment was unpredictable. For half of the series, those decks that gave high rewards were also better decks in the long run. For the other half of the series, the decks that gave low rewards were better decks in the long run. Behaviorally, participants started to differentiate between advantageous and disadvantageous decks after approximately four/six trials, and learning occurred faster for high-reward decks. Lateral PFC (lat-PFC) and Anterior Cingulate Coretex (ACC)/pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) were most active for early decisions, whereas medial orbital frontal cortex (med-OFC) was most active for decisions made later in the series. These results suggest that lat-PFC and ACC/pre-SMA are important for directing behavior towards long-term goals, whereas med-OFC represents reward values towards which behavior should be directed.

Separable neural mechanisms contribute to feedback processing in a rule-learning task.

To adjust performance appropriately to environmental demands, it is important to monitor ongoing action and process performance feedback for possible errors. In this study, we used fMRI to test whether medial prefrontal cortex (PFC)/anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral (DL) PFC have different roles in feedback processing. Twenty adults completed a rule-switch task in which rules had to be inferred on the basis of positive and negative feedback and the rules could change unexpectedly. Negative feedback resulted in increased activation in medial PFC/ACC and DLPFC relative to positive feedback, but the regions were differentially active depending on the type of negative feedback. Whereas medial PFC/ACC was most active following unexpected feedback indicating that prior performance was no longer correct, DLPFC was most active following negative feedback that was informative for correct behavior on the next trial. The current findings show that inconsistent results about the role of prefrontal cortex regions in feedback processing are most likely associated with the informative value of the performance feedback. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that medial PFC/ACC is important for signaling expectation violation whereas DLPFC is important for goal-directed actions.