ArticleNature communications2024
Irrational choices via a curvilinear representational geometry for value.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Low-dimensional factorized neural computations underlie risk-adaptive choices.Research square · 2026Article
- Foraging models explain human exploration in uncertain tasks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Pupil size predicts exploration through critical slowing in prefrontal dynamics.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Noisy Memory Generates Value in Changing Environments.Adaptive behavior · 2025Article
- Pupil size predicts the onset of exploration and changes in prefrontal dynamics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A neural manifold view of the brain.Nature neuroscience · 2025Review
- Rational inattention in neural coding for economic choice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Irrational choices via a curvilinear representational geometry for value.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Nonlinear manifolds underlie neural population activity during behaviour.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Behavioral read-out from population value signals in primate orbitofrontal cortex.Nature neuroscience · 2023Article
- Phantom oscillations in principal component analysis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
We make decisions by comparing values, but it is not yet clear how value is represented in the brain. Many models assume, if only implicitly, that the representational geometry of value is linear. However, in part due to a historical focus on noisy single neurons, rather than neuronal populations, this hypothesis has not been rigorously tested. Here, we examine the representational geometry of value in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a part of the brain linked to economic decision-making, in two male rhesus macaques. We find that values are encoded along a curved manifold in vmPFC. This curvilinear geometry predicts a specific pattern of irrational decision-making: that decision-makers will make worse choices when an irrelevant, decoy option is worse in value, compared to when it is better. We observe this type of irrational choices in behavior. Together, these results not only suggest that the representational geometry of value is nonlinear, but that this nonlinearity could impose bounds on rational decision-making.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.