The ability to perceive and exercise control over an outcome is both desirable and beneficial to our well-being. It has been shown that animals and humans alike exhibit behavioral bias towards seeking control and that such bias recruits the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and striatum. Yet, this bias remains to be quantitatively captured and studied neurally. Here, we employed a behavioral task to measure the preference for control and characterize its neural underpinnings. Participants made a series of binary choices between having control and no-control over a game for monetary reward. The mere presence of the control option evoked activity in the ventral striatum. Importantly, we manipulated the expected value (EV) of each choice pair to extract the pairing where participants were equally likely to choose either option. The difference in EV between the options at this point of equivalence was inferred as the subjective value of control. Strikingly, perceiving control inflated the reward value of the associated option by 30% and this value inflation was tracked by the vmPFC. Altogether, these results capture the subjective value of perceived control inherent in decision making and highlight the role of corticostriatal circuitry in the perception of control.

中文翻译：

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皮质纹状体回路编码感知控制的主观价值。


感知和控制结果的能力对于我们的福祉来说既是可取的，也是有益的。研究表明，动物和人类都表现出寻求控制的行为偏差，并且这种偏差会招募腹内侧前额皮质（vmPFC）和纹状体。然而，这种偏见仍有待定量捕捉和神经研究。在这里，我们采用行为任务来测量对控制的偏好并表征其神经基础。参与者在控制和不控制游戏之间做出一系列二元选择以获得金钱奖励。仅仅控制选项的存在就会引起腹侧纹状体的活动。重要的是，我们操纵每个选择对的期望值（EV）来提取参与者同样可能选择任一选项的配对。在这个等价点上，选项之间的 EV 差异被推断为控制的主观价值。引人注目的是，感知控制使相关期权的奖励价值膨胀了 30%，并且 vmPFC 跟踪了这种价值膨胀。总而言之，这些结果捕捉了决策中固有的感知控制的主观价值，并强调了皮质纹状体回路在控制感知中的作用。