Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Tracks Multiple Environmental Variables during Search

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediates guessing.

Guessing is an important component of everyday cognition. The present study examined the neural substrates of guessing using a simple card-playing task in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects were scanned under four conditions. In two, they were shown images of the back of a playing card and had to guess either the colour or the suit of the card. In the other ...

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediates visual attention during facial emotion recognition.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is known to play a crucial role in regulating human social and emotional behaviour, yet the precise mechanisms by which it subserves this broad function remain unclear. Whereas previous neuropsychological studies have largely focused on the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in higher-order deliberative processes related to valuation and decision-makin...

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex encodes emotional value.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a critical role in processing appetitive stimuli. Recent investigations have shown that reward value signals in the vmPFC can be altered by emotion regulation processes; however, to what extent the processing of positive emotion relies on neural regions implicated in reward processing is unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of emotion regul...

Examining Theories of Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Function

Social attention and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Imagine looking out over the patrons in a restaurant as one of them looks up from their plate of food and makes eye contact with you. The change in the visual image on your retina is miniscule, yet the knowledge gained is great. A tiny change in the movements of another person’s eyes lets you know instantly that they are looking at you, know that you are also looking at them, and feel a particu...