Glossary
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
What is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex?
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in value-based decision-making, emotional processes, and representations of self and others. Researchers study how its activity relates to what people value and choose.
Value and self-control
In Hare and colleagues' 2009 study, dieters made real food choices during fMRI. Value-related vmPFC activity reflected both taste and health attributes in participants classified as successful self-controllers. In those classified as non-self-controllers, it reflected taste alone. This links differences in food choice to the attributes represented in the measured value signal; it does not establish that imaging can identify someone’s general capacity for self-control.
Emotion and the somatic marker hypothesis
The somatic marker hypothesis proposes that emotional and bodily signals help guide decisions. Past experience is proposed to associate an option with a bodily or simulated bodily state; reactivating that state can bias the person toward or away from the option. Such signals could narrow the choices considered, alongside deliberate evaluation.
A finding from injury research
Bechara and colleagues’ 2000 review describes a gambling task involving four card decks. Two offered larger immediate rewards but larger losses over repeated choices; the others produced better net returns. In the reported studies, patients with bilateral ventromedial prefrontal damage continued choosing the disadvantageous decks more often, while controls tended to shift toward the advantageous decks.
Researchers also measured skin conductance before and after choices. The studied patients could respond after rewards or losses, but lacked the anticipatory responses that developed in controls before choices. The authors interpreted this pattern as support for the somatic-marker account. It identifies a task-specific impairment and physiological difference, rather than proving that bodily signals are necessary for every rational decision.
What injury and imaging can tell us
Claims about what a region is causally necessary for require more than a correlation in an imaging study. Injury studies provide a different form of evidence about the region’s contribution to decision-making.
Why it matters
Value, goals, and emotion are connected research questions. The vmPFC helps researchers investigate these connections.