The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is proposed to be critical to economic decision making. Yet one can inactivate OFC without affecting well-practiced choices. One possible explanation of this lack of effect is that well-practiced decisions are codified into habits or configural-based policies not normally thought to require OFC. Here, we tested this idea by training rats to choose between different pellet pairs across a set of standard offers and then inactivating OFC subregions during choices between novel offers of previously experienced pairs or between novel pairs of previously experienced pellets. Contrary to expectations, controls performed as well on novel as experienced offers yet had difficulty initially estimating their subjective preference on novel pairs, difficulty exacerbated by lateral OFC inactivation. This pattern of results indicates that established economic choice reflects the use of an underlying model or goods space and that lateral OFC is only required for normal behavior when the established framework must incorporate new information.

眶额皮质（OFC）被认为对经济决策至关重要。然而，人们可以在不影响实践良好的选择的情况下停用 OFC。对于这种效果缺乏的一种可能的解释是，经过良好实践的决策被编入习惯或基于配置的政策中，通常认为不需要 OFC。在这里，我们通过训练老鼠在一组标准报价中的不同颗粒对之间进行选择来测试这个想法，然后在先前经历过的新报价对或先前经历过的颗粒的新对之间进行选择时使 OFC 子区域失活。与预期相反，对照组在新奇和有经验的报价上表现得一样好，但最初很难估计他们对新奇对的主观偏好，横向 OFC 失活加剧了这一困难。这种结果模式表明，既定的经济选择反映了基础模型或商品空间的使用，并且只有当既定框架必须纳入新信息时，横向 OFC 才需要正常行为。