Whether you are a gazelle bounding to the richest tract of grassland or a return customer heading to the freshest farm stand at a crowded market, the ability to learn the value of spatial locations is important in adaptive behavior. The ventromedial frontal lobe (VMF) is implicated in value-based decisions between objects and in flexibly learning to choose between objects based on feedback. However, it is unclear if this region plays a material-general role in reward learning. Here, we tested whether VMF is necessary for learning the value of spatial locations. People with VMF damage were compared with healthy participants and a control group with frontal damage sparing VMF in an incentivized spatial search task. Participants chose among spatial targets distributed among distractors, rewarded with an expected value that varied along the right-left axis of the screen. People with VMF damage showed a weaker tendency to reap reward in contralesional hemispace. In some individuals, this impairment could be dissociated from the ability to make value-based decisions between objects, assessed separately. This is the first evidence that the VMF is critically involved in reward-guided spatial search and offers a novel perspective on the relationships between value, spatial attention, and decision-making.

中文翻译：

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价值忽视：腹内侧额叶在学习空间位置价值方面的关键作用。

无论您是前往最肥沃的草原的瞪羚，还是前往拥挤市场上最新鲜的农场摊位的回头客，了解空间位置价值的能力对于适应性行为都很重要。腹内侧额叶 (VMF) 涉及对象之间基于价值的决策，以及根据反馈灵活学习在对象之间进行选择。然而，目前尚不清楚该区域是否在奖励学习中发挥重要作用。在这里，我们测试了 VMF 是否对于学习空间位置的价值是必要的。在激励性空间搜索任务中，将 VMF 损伤的人与健康参与者和额叶损伤保留 VMF 的对照组进行了比较。参与者选择分布在干扰项中的空间目标，获得沿屏幕左右轴变化的期望值。VMF 损伤的人在对侧半球表现出较弱的获得奖励的倾向。在某些人中，这种损害可能与在对象之间做出基于价值的决定的能力无关，单独评估。这是第一个证据表明 VMF 严重参与了奖励引导的空间搜索，并为价值、空间注意力和决策之间的关系提供了新的视角。