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）与信号目标价值和行动成本有关，但这些区域的确切功能作用仍然存在争议。在这里，我们建议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（预期奖励）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）是分离的。我们使用了一种原始方法，旨在识别多个偏好任务之间的一致性，从喜爱度评级到涉及属性集成和选项比较的二元决策。人类男性和女性参与者的功能磁共振成像结果证实了 vmPFC 作为一个通用评估系统，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，更多的背侧区域并不关心期权的评估，而是关心元认知变量、mPFC 活动中反映的信心和 dmPFC 活动中的审议时间。因此，选择选项（在 vmPFC 中表示）所付出的努力与在深思熟虑（在 dmPFC 中表示）上投入的努力之间存在分离，后者表现为瞳孔放大。更一般地说，评估偏好任务的共性可能有助于对驱动人类行为的成本/收益权衡背后的神经机制达成统一的看法。

意义陈述决策神经科学研究表明内侧前额皮质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，精确计算变量和特定大脑区域之间的联系有些不一致。在这里，我们使用 fMRI 来演示内侧 PFC 的强大功能分区，该分区可概括涉及目标价值和/或行动成本估计的任务，以提供判断或做出选择。这种一般的功能划分在决策因素的神经表征（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）之间产生了关键的分离。