ArticlebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology2025
Is the whole the sum of its parts? Neural computation of consumer bundle valuation in humans.
Article in bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
- Updated by
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Humans are often tasked with making decisions about bundles of multiple items and very little is known about how the human brain aggregates, computes and represents value in such cases. We investigated how the human brain evaluates consumer items, both individually and in bundles, and how this activity relates to choice behavior. Participants underwent a deep-fMRI scanning protocol while we elicited behavioral valuations for single and bundled items. Behaviorally, we find that bundle values are sub-additively discounted compared to the sum of individual item values. Neurally, we find that the same distributed network in pre-frontal cortex computes the value of a bundle and its constituent individual items, but the value representation undergoes a normalization that actively re-scales across bundle and single item contexts. These findings suggest that generalized value regions contextually adapt within a valuation hierarchy, as opposed to utilizing an absolute value code.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.