Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, while on the run, purportedly burned two million dollars in banknotes to keep his daughter warm. A stark reminder that, in life, circumstances and goals can quickly change, forcing us to reassess and modify our values on-the-fly. Studies in decision-making and neuroeconomics have often implicitly equated value to reward, emphasising the hedonic and automatic aspect of the value computation, while overlooking its functional (concept-like) nature. Here we outline the computational and biological principles that enable the brain to compute the usefulness of an option or action by creating abstractions that flexibly adapt to changing goals. We present different algorithmic architectures, comparing ideas from artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive neuroscience with psychological theories and, when possible, drawing parallels.

据称，哥伦比亚毒枭巴勃罗·埃斯科瓦尔在逃亡期间焚烧了 200 万美元的钞票以取暖。一个明显的提醒是，在生活中，环境和目标会迅速改变，迫使我们重新评估和即时修改我们的价值观。决策制定和神经经济学的研究常常含蓄地将价值等同于奖励，强调价值计算的享乐和自动方面，而忽视其功能（类似概念）的性质。在这里，我们概述了计算和生物学原理，这些原理使大脑能够通过创建灵活适应不断变化的目标的抽象来计算选项或行动的有用性。我们展示了不同的算法架构，将人工智能 (AI) 和认知神经科学的思想与心理学理论进行了比较，并在可能的情况下，