Neurons in the macaque orbitofrontal cortex code relative preference of both rewarding and aversive outcomes

Many studies have shown that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is involved in the processing of emotional information. However, although some lines of study showed that the OFC is also involved in negative emotions, few electrophysiological studies have focused on the characteristics of OFC neuronal responses to aversive information at the individual neuron level. On the other hand, a previous study has shown that many OFC neurons code relative preference of available rewards. In this study, we aimed to elucidate how reward information and aversive information are coded in the OFC at the individual neuron level. To achieve this aim, we introduced the electrical stimulus (ES) as an aversive stimulus, and compared the neuronal responses to the ES-predicting stimulus with those to reward-predicting stimuli. We found that many OFC neurons showed responses to both the ES-predicting stimulus and the reward-predicting stimulus, and they code relative preference of not only the reward outcome but also the aversive outcome. This result suggests that the same group of OFC neurons code both reward and aversive information in the form of relative preference.