Deciding about courses of action involves minimizing costs and maximizing benefits. Decision neuroscience studies have implicated both the ventral and dorsal medial PFC (vmPFC and dmPFC) in signaling goal value and action cost, but the precise functional role of these regions is still a matter of debate. Here, we suggest a more general functional partition that applies not only to decisions but also to judgments about goal value (expected reward) and action cost (expected effort). In this conceptual framework, cognitive representations related to options (reward value and effort cost) are dissociated from metacognitive representations (confidence and deliberation) related to solving the task (providing a judgment or making a choice). We used an original approach aimed at identifying consistencies across several preference tasks, from likeability ratings to binary decisions involving both attribute integration and option comparison. fMRI results in human male and female participants confirmed the vmPFC as a generic valuation system, its activity increasing with reward value and decreasing with effort cost. In contrast, more dorsal regions were not concerned with the valuation of options but with metacognitive variables, confidence being reflected in mPFC activity and deliberation time in dmPFC activity. Thus, there was a dissociation between the effort attached to choice options (represented in the vmPFC) and the effort invested in deliberation (represented in the dmPFC), the latter being expressed in pupil dilation. More generally, assessing commonalities across preference tasks might help in reaching a unified view of the neural mechanisms underlying the cost/benefit tradeoffs that drive human behavior.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Decision neuroscience studies have implicated the medial PFC in forming the cognitive representations that drive human choice behavior. However, different studies using different tasks have suggested somewhat inconsistent links between precise computational variables and specific brain regions. Here, we use fMRI to demonstrate a robust functional partition of the medial PFC that generalizes across tasks involving an estimation of goal value and/or action cost to provide a judgment or make a choice. This general functional partition makes a critical dissociation between neural representations of decisional factors (the expected costs and benefits attached to a given option) and metacognitive estimates (confidence in the judgment or choice, and effort invested in the deliberation process).

决定行动方案涉及最小化成本和最大化收益。决策神经科学研究表明腹侧和背侧内侧 PFC（vmPFC 和 dmPFC）都涉及信号目标值和行动成本，但这些区域的确切功能作用仍存在争议。在这里，我们提出了一个更通用的功能划分，它不仅适用于决策，还适用于对目标价值（预期回报）和行动成本（预期努力）的判断。在这个概念框架中，与选项（奖励价值和努力成本）相关的认知表征与与解决任务（提供判断或做出选择）相关的元认知表征（信心和深思熟虑）分离。我们使用了一种旨在识别多个偏好任务之间的一致性的原始方法，从喜爱度评级到涉及属性整合和选项比较的二元决策。人类男性和女性参与者的 fMRI 结果证实 vmPFC 是一个通用的评估系统，其活动随着奖励价值的增加而增加，随着努力成本的增加而减少。相比之下，更多的背侧区域不关心选项的估值，而是元认知变量，信心反映在 mPFC 活动中，而审议时间反映在 dmPFC 活动中。因此，选择选项所付出的努力（在 vmPFC 中表示）与在审议中投入的努力（在 dmPFC 中表示）之间存在分离，后者表现为瞳孔放大。更普遍，

意义声明决策神经科学研究表明内侧 PFC 参与形成驱动人类选择行为的认知表征。然而，使用不同任务的不同研究表明，精确的计算变量与特定大脑区域之间的联系有些不一致。在这里，我们使用 fMRI 来展示内侧 PFC 的强大功能分区，该功能分区概括了涉及估计目标值和/或行动成本的任务，以提供判断或做出选择。这种一般功能划分在决策因素（给定选项的预期成本和收益）和元认知估计（对判断或选择的信心，以及在审议过程中投入的努力）的神经表征之间进行了重要的分离。