Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have new insight on what goes on inside people’s heads as they make decisions to obtain information about the future. The scientists identified a set of mental rules that governs decision-making about physical rewards — for example, food or money — and cognitive rewards – like the joy felt when accessing sought information. And they identified the part of the brain that regulates this type of decision-making. The process occurs in the lateral habenula, an ancient brain structure shared by species as distantly related as people and fish.
The findings not only offer insight on the body’s most mysterious organ but have potential to help people struggling with tough choices, whether due to the inherent complexity of certain decisions — such as whether to take a genetic test that might return unwelcome information — or due to mental illnesses that affect the ability to make decisions, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression.
The study is available in Nature Neuroscience.
“Identifying the circuits involved with assigning value to cognitive rewards, like information about the future, is really important, because that kind of valuation is often what breaks down in mental disorders,” said senior author Ilya Monosov, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at Washington University. “If we can understand exactly what part of the decision-making process is malfunctioning in an individual, we may be able to target that aspect of the process precisely and treat some mental illnesses more effectively.”