Valuing outcomes
Edmund Rolls and others have shown that orbitofrontal neurons track the reward value of stimuli, and that their responses can change when that value changes. Damage can make it hard for animals and people to update behavior after a formerly rewarding option stops paying off. Wilson and colleagues proposed a further role: maintaining a cognitive map of the current task and what state the person is in.
Thinking ahead and understanding others
Patients with damage to this general area may struggle to weigh future consequences, as has been reported in work on decision making under uncertainty.
- Comparing options that are not directly observed
- Anticipating the outcome of actions
- Changes in empathy and social conduct following ventromedial damage, as described by Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues
Cautions
Assigning a single function to this region would be a mistake. Its subregions differ, and many studies group it with the broader ventromedial prefrontal cortex, so conclusions about one area may reflect another. Imaging of the area is hampered by signal loss near the sinuses. Lesion studies typically involve small numbers of patients, whose damage rarely respects anatomical boundaries. The link from value computation to empathy is especially indirect: reduced empathy after injury does not show that the orbitofrontal cortex generates empathy on its own.
Further reading
- Bechara, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. (2000). Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 10(3).
- Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tomer, R., Berger, B. D., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2003). Characterization of empathy deficits following prefrontal brain damage: The role of the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(3).
- Wilson, R. C., Takahashi, Y. K., Schoenbaum, G., & Niv, Y. (2014). Orbitofrontal cortex as a cognitive map of task space. Neuron, 81(2).