Special Seminar with Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Ph.D.
“Neuronal Encoding of Economic Value”
Monday, May 7th, 2007
2:00 PM
McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Seminar Room 46-3189

Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Ph.D.
Department of Neurobiology
Harvard Medical School

Neuronal Encoding of Economic Value

Economic choice is the behavior observed when individuals make choices based solely on subjective preferences--for example out of a restaurant menu. Behavioral evidence suggests that economic choice entails assigning values to the available options. I will show that individual neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encode the value monkeys assign to different beverages while they choose between them. Neurons in OFC encode value as a subjective quantity, as opposed to any physical property of the beverages. Moreover, individual cells in OFC reflect the transitivity of economic values. Notably, neurons in OFC encode economic value per se, not as a modulation of sensory or motor processes. This suggests that economic choice is ultimately choice between goods, rather than choice between actions.