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Updated: Oct 26, 2025
12:09
Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans
Published on: March 19, 2014
23.8K
Single caudate neurons encode temporally discounted value for formulating motivation for action
Yukiko Hori1, Koki Mimura1, Yuji Nagai1
1Department of Functional Brain Imaging, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan.
Elife
|July 30, 2021
Summary
Neurons in the primate dorsal caudate head (dCDh) encode the value of delayed rewards, crucial for motivation. Inactivating dCDh impairs decisions involving reward timing but not reward size alone.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Decision-making
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Temporal discounting describes how the value of rewards decreases with delay.
- Understanding the neural basis of motivation for delayed rewards is crucial for decision-making research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of neuronal activity in the dorsal caudate head (dCDh) in encoding temporally discounted reward values.
- To determine how dCDh activity contributes to motivation for delayed rewards.
Main Methods:
- Macaque monkeys performed an instrumental task with visual cues indicating reward size and delay.
- Single-unit recordings were conducted in the dCDh.
- Pharmacological and chemogenetic inactivation of the dCDh were performed.
Main Results:
- dCDh neuronal activity signaled the temporally discounted value of delayed rewards.
- dCDh inactivation distorted task performance related to reward size and delay integration.
- dCDh inactivation did not affect performance for rewards without delay.
Conclusions:
- The dCDh plays a critical role in encoding integrated multi-dimensional information for motivation.
- dCDh is essential for computing the motivation for delayed rewards based on their value and delay.
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