Figure 1.

Value signals in the brain. (A) Example timeline of the experimental task (called Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction: Becker et al., 1964). In this task, participants report their “willingness to pay” (i.e., subjective value) for food items. On each trial, they make a bid for one item in the context of auction. Importantly, the auction mechanism is carefully designed so that the optimal strategy for the participants is to always bid the number closest to their true subjective value for obtaining that item. The food image is adopted from Food-pics (Blechert et al., 2014). (B) Neural correlates of value signals. Subjective value signals are correlated with neural activity (blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal) in the vmPFC. vmPFC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex.