Scientists have been successful in identifying a particular region in our brain that controls typical decision making process of the brain. It will now be possible to understand how a person decides of halting the midnight exploration of refrigerator and enjoying the leftover chicken legs. The mechanism governing such decisions of the brain leading to malfunction in addiction and mental illness would be immensely helpful in designing the further treatments, say the researchers.
Emmanuel Procyk and his colleague researchers have published the findings of this research in the January 24, 2008, issue of the journal” Neuron”.
Researchers conducted experiments on monkeys and required them to spend time in exploration targeting a ‘juice reward’ with a choice of tough targets on a computer screen. Immediately upon identifying their ‘juice reward’, the monkeys were given a period for touching the reward many times in order to explore the chances of getting more rewards.
Electrical activities of these monkeys were recorded by the researchers. This electrical activity involved hundreds of neurons in the “Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)”. The ACC is a brain region that becomes active in adaptive behavior like shifting between exploring and exploiting.
Researchers analyzed and measured the ‘electro-physiological activity’ of cells during the four different kinds of feedbacks. These feedbacks include incorrect choices, first reward, repetition of the reward, and the ending of a trial by breaking fixation on the targets.
Detailed analysis of the results obtained in the research led to conclude the researchers that “Our data show that ACC discriminates between different types of feedback, allowing appropriate behavioral adaptations”.
The functions attributing to the ACC activations help in evaluating feedbacks. These functions also contribute in monitoring the different steps of the task at hand to optimize action adaptation and valuation. “A dysfunction of these mechanisms represents the core feature of cognitive alterations observed in addiction and mental illness”, researchers say.
The ACC generates specific signals that distinguish between various behaviorally relevant positive and negative feedbacks indicate possible triggering adaptations. ACC has an important in the establishment of action valuations. ACC also emphasizes a combined role in monitoring events and actions representative of different behavioral regulation in higher levels of tough task control “underlining the intimate link between control and action valuation”, according to Emmanuel Procyk.
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