Abstract
Damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex (VMFC) in humans is associated with deficits in decision making. Decision making, however, often happens while people are interacting with others, where it is important to take the social consequences of a course of action into account. It is well known that VMFC lesions also lead to marked alterations in patients’ emotions and ability to interact socially; however, it has not been clear which parts of the VMFC are critical for these changes. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the role of the VMFC in choice behavior during interpersonal exchanges. Here, we highlight recent research that suggests that two areas within or adjacent to the VMFC, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), may play distinct but complementary roles in mediating normal patterns of emotion and social behavior. Converging lines of evidence from human, macaque, and rat studies now suggest that the OFC may be more specialized for simple emotional responses, such as fear and aggression, through its role in representing primary reinforcement or punishment. By contrast, the ACC may play a distinct role in more complex aspects of emotion, such as social interaction, by virtue of its connections with the discrete parts of the temporal lobe and subcortical structures that control autonomic responses.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adolphs, R. (2001). The neurobiology of social cognition. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11, 231–239.
Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. [R.] (1994). Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature, 372, 669–672.
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV-TR (4th ed., text revision). Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Amodio, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 268–277.
Apperly, I. A., Samson, D., Chiavarino, C., & Humphreys, G. W. (2004). Frontal and temporo-parietal lobe contributions to theory of mind: neuropsychological evidence from a false-belief task with reduced language and executive demands. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1773–1784.
Arana, F. S., Parkinson, J. A., Hinton, E., Holland, A. J., Owen, A. M., & Roberts, A. C. (2003). Dissociable contributions of the human amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex to incentive motivation and goal selection. Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 9632–9638.
Bannerman, D. M., Deacon, R. M. J., Offen, S., Friswell, J., Grubb, M., & Rawlins, J. N. P. (2002). Double dissociation of function within the hippocampus: spatial memory and hyponeophagia. Behavioral Neuroscience, 116, 884–901.
Barbas, H., Ghashghaei, H., Dombrowski, S. M., & Rempel-Clower, N. L. (1999). Medial prefrontal cortices are unified by common connections with superior temporal cortices and distinguished by input from memory-related areas in the rhesus monkey. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 410, 343–367.
Baxter, M. G., Parker, A., Lindner, C. C. C., Izquierdo, A. D., & Murray, E. A. (2000). Control of response selection by reinforcer value requires interaction of amygdala and orbital prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 4311–4319.
Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7–15.
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. (2000). Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 295–307.
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science, 275, 1293–1295.
Beer, J. S., Heerey, E. A., Keltner, D., Scabini, D., & Knight, R. T. (2003). The regulatory function of self-conscious emotion: insights from patients with orbitofrontal damage. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85, 594–604.
Beer, J. S., John, O. P., Scabini, D., & Knight, R. T. (2006). Orbitofrontal cortex and social behavior: integrating self-monitoring and emotion-cognition interactions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 871–879.
Belin, P. (2006). Voice processing in human and non-human primates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 361, 2091–2107.
Berg, J., Dickhaut, J., & McCabe, K. (1995). Trust, reciprocity, and social history. Games & Economic Behavior, 10, 122–142.
Bruce, C., Desimone, R., & Gross, C. G. (1981). Visual properties of neurons in a polysensory area in superior temporal sulcus of the macaque. Journal of Neurophysiology, 46, 369–384.
Butter, C. M., Snyder, D. R., & McDonald, J. A. (1970). Effects of orbital frontal lesions on aversive and aggressive behaviors in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology, 72, 132–144.
Camille, N., Coricelli, G., Sallet, J., Pradat-Diehl, P., Duhamel, J.-R., & Sirigu, A. (2004). The involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret. Science, 304, 1167–1170.
Carmichael, S. T., & Price, J. L. (1995a). Limbic connections of the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex in macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 363, 615–641.
Carmichael, S. T., & Price, J. L. (1995b). Sensory and premotor connections of the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 363, 642–664.
Carmichael, S. T., & Price, J. L. (1996). Connectional networks within the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 371, 179–207.
Castelli, F., Frith, C. [D.], Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2002). Autism, Asperger syndrome and brain mechanisms for the attribution of mental states to animated shapes. Brain, 125, 1839–1849.
Chiu, P. H., Kayali, M. A., Kishida, K. T., Tomlin, D., Klinger, L. G., Klinger, M. R., & Montague, P. R. (2008). Self responses along cingulate cortex reveal quantitative neural phenotype for high-functioning autism. Neuron, 57, 463–473.
Cholfin, J. A., & Rubenstein, J. L. (2007). Patterning of frontal cortex subdivisions by Fgf17. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 7652–7657.
Croxson, P. L., Johansen-Berg, H., Behrens, T. E. J., Robson, M. D., Pinsk, M. A., Gross, C. G., et al. (2005). Quantitative investigation of connections of the prefrontal cortex in the human and macaque using probabilistic diffusion tractography. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 8854–8866.
Cummings, J. L. (1993). Frontal-subcortical circuits and human behavior. Archives of Neurology, 50, 873–880.
Damasio, A. R., Tranel, D., & Damasio, H. (1990). Individuals with sociopathic behavior caused by frontal damage fail to respond autonomically to social stimuli. Behavioural Brain Research, 41, 81–94.
Damasio, H., Grabowski, T., Frank, R., Galaburda, A. M., & Damasio, A. R. (1994). The return of Phineas Gage: clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. Science, 264, 1102–1105.
Deaner, R. O., Khera, A. V., & Platt, M. L. (2005). Monkeys pay per view: adaptive valuation of social images by rhesus macaques. Current Biology, 15, 543–548.
de Bruin, J. P., van Oyen, H. G., & Van de Poll, N. (1983). Behavioural changes following lesions of the orbital prefrontal cortex in male rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 10, 209–232.
Drevets, W. C., Price, J. L., Simpson, J. R., Jr., Todd, R. D., Reich, T., Vannier, M., & Raichle, M. E. (1997). Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders. Nature, 386, 824–827.
Emery, N. J., Capitanio, J. P., Mason, W. A., Machado, C. J., Mendoza, S. P., & Amaral, D. G. (2001). The effects of bilateral lesions of the amygdala on dyadic social interactions in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Behavioral Neuroscience, 115, 515–544.
Eslinger, P. J., & Damasio, A. R. (1985). Severe disturbance of higher cognition after bilateral frontal lobe ablation: patient EVR. Neurology, 35, 1731–1741.
Fellows, L. K., & Farah, M. J. (2003). Ventromedial frontal cortex mediates affective shifting in humans: evidence from a reversal learning paradigm. Brain, 126, 1830–1837.
Fellows, L. K., & Farah, M. J. (2007). The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in decision making: judgment under uncertainty or judgment per se? Cerebral Cortex, 17, 2669–2674.
Frith, C. D., & Frith, U. (1999). Interacting minds—a biological basis. Science, 286, 1692–1695.
Frith, U. (2001). Mind blindness and the brain in autism. Neuron, 32, 969–979.
Galaburda, A. M., & Pandya, D. N. (1983). The intrinsic architectonic and connectional organization of the superior temporal region of the rhesus monkey. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 221, 169–184.
Gallagher, H. L., Jack, A. I., Roepstorff, A., & Frith, C. D. (2002). Imaging the intentional stance in a competitive game. NeuroImage, 16, 814–821.
Ghazanfar, A. A., Maier, J. X., Hoffman, K. L., & Logothetis, N. K. (2005). Multisensory integration of dynamic faces and voices in rhesus monkey auditory cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 5004–5012.
Ghazanfar, A. A., Turesson, H. K., Maier, J. X., van Dinther, R., Patterson, R. D., & Logothetis, N. K. (2007). Vocal-tract resonances as indexical cues in rhesus monkeys. Current Biology, 17, 425–430.
Gothard, K. M., Battaglia, F. P., Erickson, C. A., Spitler, K. M., & Amaral, D. G. (2007). Neural responses to facial expression and face identity in the monkey amygdala. Journal of Neurophysiology, 97, 1671–1683.
Grafman, J., Schwab, K., Warden, D., Pridgen, A., Brown, H. R., & Salazar, A. M. (1996). Frontal lobe injuries, violence, and aggression: a report of the Vietnam Head Injury Study. Neurology, 46, 1231–1238.
Haber, S. N., Kim, K.-S., Mailly, P., & Calzavara, R. (2006). Rewardrelated cortical inputs define a large striatal region in primates that interface with associative cortical connections, providing a substrate for incentive-based learning. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 8368–8376.
Hadland, K. A., Rushworth, M. F. S., Gaffan, D., & Passingham, R. E. (2003). The effect of cingulate lesions on social behaviour and emotion. Neuropsychologia, 41, 919–931.
Harlow, J. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head. Boston Medical & Surgical Journal, 39, 389–393.
Harlow, J. (1868). Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head. Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society, 2, 327–347.
Heberlein, A. S., Padon, A. A., Gillihan, S. J., Farah, M. J., & Fellows, L. K. (2008). Ventromedial frontal lobe plays a critical role in facial emotion recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 721–733.
Hoffman, K. L., Gothard, K. M., Schmid, M. C., & Logothetis, N. K. (2007). Facial-expression and gaze-selective responses in the monkey amygdala. Current Biology, 17, 766–772.
Hornak, J., Bramham, J., Rolls, E. T., Morris, R. G., O’Doherty, J., Bullock, P. R., & Polkey, C. E. (2003). Changes in emotion after circumscribed surgical lesions of the orbitofrontal and cingulate cortices. Brain, 126, 1691–1712.
Hornak, J., O’Doherty, J., Bramham, J., Rolls, E. T., Morris, R. G., Bullock, P. R., & Polkey, C. E. (2004). Reward-related reversal learning after surgical excisions in orbito-frontal or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in humans. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 463–478.
Hornak, J., Rolls, E. T., & Wade, D. (1996). Face and voice expression identification in patients with emotional and behavioural changes following ventral frontal lobe damage. Neuropsychologia, 34, 247–261.
Iversen, S. D., & Mishkin, M. (1970). Perseverative interference in monkeys following selective lesions of the inferior prefrontal convexity. Experimental Brain Research, 11, 376–386.
Izquierdo, A., Suda, R. K., & Murray, E. A. (2004). Bilateral orbital prefrontal cortex lesions in rhesus monkeys disrupt choices guided by both reward value and reward contingency. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 7540–7548.
Izquierdo, A., Suda, R. K., & Murray, E. A. (2005). Comparison of the effects of bilateral orbital prefrontal cortex lesions and amygdala lesions on emotional responses in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 8534–8542.
Johansen-Berg, H., Gutman, D. A., Behrens, T. E. J., Matthews, P. M., Rushworth, M. F. S., Katz, E., et al. (2008). Anatomical connectivity of the subgenual cingulate region targeted with deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression. Cerebral Cortex, 18, 1374–1383.
Kennedy, D. P., Redcay, E., & Courchesne, E. (2006). Failing to deactivate: resting functional abnormalities in autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 8275–8280.
King-Casas, B., Tomlin, D., Anen, C., Camerer, C. F., Quartz, S. R., & Montague, P. R. (2005). Getting to know you: reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science, 308, 78–83.
Knutson, B., Fong, G. W., Adams, C. M., Varner, J. L., & Hommer, D. (2001). Dissociation of reward anticipation and outcome with eventrelated fMRI. NeuroReport, 12, 3683–3687.
Koenigs, M., & Tranel, D. (2007). Irrational economic decisionmaking after ventromedial prefrontal damage: evidence from the Ultimatum Game. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 951–956.
Kolb, B. (1974). Social behavior of rats with chronic prefrontal lesions. Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology, 87, 466–474.
Kondo, H., Saleem, K. S., & Price, J. L. (2003). Differential connections of the temporal pole with the orbital and medial prefrontal networks in macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 465, 499–523.
Kondo, H., Saleem, K. S., & Price, J. L. (2005). Differential connections of the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortex with the orbital and medial prefrontal networks in macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493, 479–509.
Lacroix, L., Spinelli, S., Heidbreder, C. A., & Feldon, J. (2000). Differential role of the medial and lateral prefrontal cortices in fear and anxiety. Behavioral Neuroscience, 114, 1119–1130.
Laplane, D., Degos, J. D., Baulac, M., & Gray, F. (1981). Bilateral infarction of the anterior cingulate gyri and of the fornices: Report of a case. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 51, 289–300.
Machado, C. J., & Bachevalier, J. (2006). The impact of selective amygdala, orbital frontal cortex, or hippocampal formation lesions on established social relationships in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Behavioral Neuroscience, 120, 761–786.
Machado, C. J., & Bachevalier, J. (2007). The effects of selective amygdala, orbital frontal cortex or hippocampal formation lesions on reward assessment in nonhuman primates. European Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 2885–2904.
Macmillan, M. (2002). An odd kind of fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Maia, T. V., & McClelland, J. L. (2004). A reexamination of the evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis: what participants really know in the Iowa gambling task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 16075–16080.
Mayberg, H. S., Lozano, A. M., Voon, V., McNeely, H. E., Seminowicz, D., Hamani, C., et al. (2005). Deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression. Neuron, 45, 651–660.
McClure, S. M., Ericson, K. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2007). Time discounting for primary rewards. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 5796–5804.
McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science, 306, 503–507.
McEnaney, K. W., & Butter, C. M. (1969). Perseveration of responding and nonresponding in monkeys with orbital frontal ablations. Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology, 68, 558–561.
McHugh, S. B., Deacon, R. M. J., Rawlins, J. N. P., & Bannerman, D. M. (2004). Amygdala and ventral hippocampus contribute differentially to mechanisms of fear and anxiety. Behavioral Neuroscience, 118, 63–78.
Meunier, M., Bachevalier, J., Murray, E. A., Málková, L., & Mishkin, M. (1999). Effects of aspiration versus neurotoxic lesions of the amygdala on emotional responses in monkeys. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 4403–4418.
Mineka, S., Keir, R., & Price, V. (1980). Fear of snakes in wild- and laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Animal Learning & Behavior, 8, 653–663.
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2004). Encodingspecific effects of social cognition on the neural correlates of subsequent memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 4912–4917.
Mitchell, J. P., Macrae, C. N., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). Dissociable medial prefrontal contributions to judgments of similar and dissimilar others. Neuron, 50, 655–663.
Montague, P. R., & Berns, G. S. (2002). Neural economics and the biological substrates of valuation. Neuron, 36, 265–284.
Moretti, L., Dragone, D., & di Pellegrino, G. (in press). Reward and social valuation deficits following ventromedial prefrontal damage. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Murray, E. A., & Izquierdo, A. (2007). Orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala contributions to affect and action in primates. In G. Schoenbaum, J. A. Gottfried, E. A. Murray, & S. J. Ramus (Eds.), Linking affect to action: Critical contributions of the orbitofrontal cortex (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1121, pp. 273–296). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Murray, E. A., O’Doherty, J. P., & Schoenbaum, G. (2007). What we know and do not know about the functions of the orbitofrontal cortex after 20 years of cross-species studies. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 8166–8169.
Neary, D., Snowden, J. S., & Mann, D. M. (2000). Classification and description of frontotemporal dementias. In J. Growdon, R. J. Wurtman, S. Corkin, & R. M. Nitsch (Eds.), The molecular basis of dementia (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 920, pp. 46–51). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Neary, D., Snowden, J. S., Northen, B., & Goulding, P. (1988). Dementia of frontal lobe type. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, & Psychiatry, 51, 353–361.
Ochsner, K. N., Beer, J. S., Robertson, E. R., Cooper, J. C., Gabrieli, J. D. E., Kihlstrom, J. F., & D’Esposito, M. (2005). The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-knowledge. NeuroImage, 28, 797–814.
O’Doherty, J. P. (2007). Lights, camembert, action! The role of human orbitofrontal cortex in encoding stimuli, rewards, and choices. In G. Schoenbaum, J. A. Gottfried, E. A. Murray, & S. J. Ramus (Eds.), Linking affect to action: Critical contributions of the orbitofrontal cortex (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1121, pp. 254–272). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
O’Doherty, J. [P.], Kringelbach, M. L., Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J., & Andrews, C. (2001). Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 95–102.
Ohnishi, T., Matsuda, H., Hashimoto, T., Kunihiro, T., Nishikawa, M., Uema, T., & Sasaki, M. (2000). Abnormal regional cerebral blood flow in childhood autism. Brain, 123, 1838–1844.
Öngür, D., An, X., & Price, J. L. (1998). Prefrontal cortical projections to the hypothalamus in macaque monkeys. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 401, 480–505.
Öngür, D., Drevets, W. C., & Price, J. L. (1998). Glial reduction in the subgenual prefrontal cortex in mood disorders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95, 13290–13295.
Öngür, D., Ferry, A. T., & Price, J. L. (2003). Architectonic subdivision of the human orbital and medial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 460, 425–449.
Padoa-Schioppa, C., & Assad, J. A. (2006). Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value. Nature, 441, 223–226.
Plassmann, H., O’Doherty, J. [P.], & Rangel, A. (2007). Orbitofrontal cortex encodes willingness to pay in everyday economic transactions. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 9984–9988.
Poremba, A., Malloy, M., Saunders, R. C., Carson, R. E., Herscovitch, P., & Mishkin, M. (2004). Species-specific calls evoke asymmetric activity in the monkey’s temporal poles. Nature, 427, 448–451.
Price, J. L. (2005). Free will versus survival: brain systems that underlie intrinsic constraints on behavior. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493, 132–139.
Quirk, G. J., & Beer, J. S. (2006). Prefrontal involvement in the regulation of emotion: convergence of rat and human studies. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16, 723–727.
Quirk, G. J., Garcia, R., & González-Lima, F. (2006). Prefrontal mechanisms in extinction of conditioned fear. Biological Psychiatry, 60, 337–343.
Ramnani, N., & Owen, A. M. (2004). Anterior prefrontal cortex: insights into function from anatomy and neuroimaging. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 184–194.
Rilling, J. K., Gutman, D. A., Zeh, T. R., Pagnoni, G., Berns, G. S., & Kilts, C. D. (2002). A neural basis for social cooperation. Neuron, 35, 395–405.
Rilling, J. K., Sanfey, A. G., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural correlates of theory of mind within interpersonal interactions. NeuroImage, 22, 1694–1703.
Roberts, A. C. (2006). Primate orbitofrontal cortex and adaptive behaviour. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 83–90.
Roesch, M. R., & Olson, C. R. (2004). Neuronal activity related to reward value and motivation in primate frontal cortex. Science, 304, 307–310.
Roesch, M. R., & Olson, C. R. (2005). Neuronal activity in primate orbitofrontal cortex reflects the value of time. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, 2457–2471.
Rolls, E. T. (1999). The brain and emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J., Wade, D., & McGrath, J. (1994). Emotionrelated learning in patients with social and emotional changes associated with frontal lobe damage. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, & Psychiatry, 57, 1518–1524.
Rosen, H. J., Allison, S. C., Schauer, G. F., Gorno-Tempini, M. L., Weiner, M. W., & Miller, B. L. (2005). Neuroanatomical correlates of behavioural disorders in dementia. Brain, 128, 2612–2625.
Rudebeck, P. H., Buckley, M. J., Walton, M. E., & Rushworth, M. F. S. (2006). A role for the macaque anterior cingulate gyrus in social valuation. Science, 313, 1310–1312.
Rudebeck, P. H., Walton, M. E., Millette, B. H. P., Shirley, E., Rushworth, M. F. S., & Bannerman, D. M. (2007). Distinct contributions of frontal areas to emotion and social behaviour in the rat. European Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 2315–2326.
Rudebeck, P. H., Walton, M. E., Smyth, A. N., Bannerman, D. M., & Rushworth, M. F. S. (2006). Separate neural pathways process different decision costs. Nature Neuroscience, 9, 1161–1168.
Saleem, K. S., Kondo, H., & Price, J. L. (2008). Complementary circuits connecting the orbital and medial prefrontal networks with the temporal, insular, and opercular cortex in the macaque monkey. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 506, 659–693.
Samson, D., Apperly, I. A., Chiavarino, C., & Humphreys, G. W. (2004). Left temporoparietal junction is necessary for representing someone else’s belief. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 499–500.
Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science, 300, 1755–1758.
Saver, J. L., & Damasio, A. R. (1991). Preserved access and processing of social knowledge in a patient with acquired sociopathy due to ventromedial frontal damage. Neuropsychologia, 29, 1241–1249.
Scearce-Levie, K., Roberson, E. D., Gerstein, H., Cholfin, J. A., Mandiyan, V. S., Shah, N. M., et al. (2008). Abnormal social behaviors in mice lacking Fgf17. Genes, Brain & Behavior, 7, 344–354.
Schoenbaum, G., & Roesch, M. (2005). Orbitofrontal cortex, associative learning, and expectancies. Neuron, 47, 633–636.
Schultz, W., Tremblay, L., & Hollerman, J. R. (2000). Reward processing in primate orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 272–283.
Seltzer, B., & Pandya, D. N. (1978). Afferent cortical connections and architectonics of the superior temporal sulcus and surrounding cortex in the rhesus monkey. Brain Research, 149, 1–24.
Shah, A. A., & Treit, D. (2003). Excitotoxic lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex attenuate fear responses in the elevated-plus maze, social interaction and shock probe burying tests. Brain Research, 969, 183–194.
Somerville, L. H., Heatherton, T. F., & Kelley, W. M. (2006). Anterior cingulate cortex responds differentially to expectancy violation and social rejection. Nature Neuroscience, 9, 1007–1008.
Tanaka, S. C., Doya, K., Okada, G., Ueda, K., Okamoto, Y., & Yamawaki, S. (2004). Prediction of immediate and future rewards differentially recruits cortico-basal ganglia loops. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 887–893.
Tomlin, D., Kayali, M. A., King-Casas, B., Anen, C., Camerer, C. F., Quartz, S. R., & Montague, P. R. (2006). Agent-specific responses in the cingulate cortex during economic exchanges. Science, 312, 1047–1050.
Van Hoesen, G. W., Morecraft, R. J., & Vogt, B. A. (1993). Connections of the monkey cingulate cortex. In B. A. Vogt & M. Gabriel (Eds.), Neurobiology of the cingulate cortex and limbic thalamus: A comprehensive handbook (pp. 19–70). Boston: Birkhäuser.
Vogt, B. A., & Peters, A. (1981). Form and distribution of neurons in rat cingulate cortex: Areas 32, 24, and 29. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 195, 603–625.
Wallis, J. D. (2007). Orbitofrontal cortex and its contribution to decision-making. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 30, 31–56.
Wallis, J. D., & Miller, E. K. (2003). Neuronal activity in primate dorsolateral and orbital prefrontal cortex during performance of a reward preference task. European Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 2069–2081.
Wheeler, E. Z., & Fellows, L. K. (2008). The human ventromedial frontal lobe is critical for learning from negative feedback. Brain, 131, 1323–1331.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rudebeck, P.H., Bannerman, D.M. & Rushworth, M.F.S. The contribution of distinct subregions of the ventromedial frontal cortex to emotion, social behavior, and decision making. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 8, 485–497 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.4.485
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.4.485