Figure 3. ACC and vlPFC neurons anticipate information to resolve uncertainty about rewards and punishments and reflect information attitudes.

(A) Neural information anticipation indexes for resolving uncertainty about rewards and punishments (x- and y-axes) in Monkey 1. Each data point is a neuron in the ACC (left) or vlPFC (right). Colors indicate neurons that significantly anticipate information to resolve uncertainty about punishments (blue), rewards (red), both with the same coding sign (green), or both with opposite coding signs (magenta). To the right of each scatter, a bar plot shows the relative proportions of these groups. Marginal histograms summarize the single neuron indexes. Arrow is the mean, asterisks indicate significance (signed-rank test). Filled bars indicate significant neurons, and text next to each marginal histogram indicates whether that number of neurons is significantly more than expected by chance (binomial test). Both ACC and vlPFC had significant numbers of neurons anticipating information to resolve reward and punishment uncertainty, and vlPFC had a substantial population that anticipated both with the same sign (green). Moreover, across the population, the reward and punishment information anticipation indexes were correlated. *, **, *** indicate p < 0.05, 0.01, 0.001. (B) Same plots for Monkey 2. Unlike Monkey 1, neither region had a significant number of neurons anticipating information to resolve punishment uncertainty or a significant correlation across valences. (C) Summary of the relationship between choice preferences for information to resolve uncertainty (x-axis; log odds from the analyses in Figure 1) and neural anticipation of information (y-axis; % of neurons with significant information anticipation). Data are shown for each brain area, monkey, and valence. Error bars are bootstrap 68% CIs. Filled data points have significant neural information anticipation (p < 0.05, binomial test).