Electrophysiological signatures of inequity-dependent reward encoding in the human OFC
Deborah Marciano,
Brooke R. Staveland,
Jack J. Lin,
Ignacio Saez,
Ming Hsu,
Robert T. Knight
Affiliations
Deborah Marciano
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Brooke R. Staveland
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Jack J. Lin
Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA; Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
Ignacio Saez
Departments of Neuroscience, Neurosurgery and Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA; Corresponding author
Ming Hsu
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Corresponding author
Robert T. Knight
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Corresponding author
Summary: Social decision making requires the integration of reward valuation and social cognition systems, both dependent on the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). How these two OFC functions interact is largely unknown. We recorded intracranial activity from the OFC of ten patients making choices in a social context where reward inequity with a social counterpart varied and could be either advantageous or disadvantageous. We find that OFC high-frequency activity (HFA; 70–150 Hz) encodes self-reward, consistent with previous reports. We also observe encoding of the social counterpart’s reward, as well as the type of inequity being experienced. Additionally, we find evidence of inequity-dependent reward encoding: depending on the type of inequity, electrodes rapidly and reversibly switch between different reward-encoding profiles. These results provide direct evidence for encoding of self- and other rewards in the human OFC and highlight the dynamic nature of encoding in the OFC as a function of social context.
