Interestingly, similar parallels between a delay-based decision making task and the operant DRL task have also been observed for lesions of the nucleus accumbens (Pothuizen et al., 2005).
This result is consistent with our prediction that the vHPC is a critical subregion for performance on the delay based, cost-benefit decision making task.
This study extends the findings of Rawlins et al. (1985) in demonstrating hippocampal lesion effects on a delay based, cost-benefit decision making T maze task, using more selective, fiber sparing, cytotoxic lesions.
To assess the relationship between social behaviour and effort-based decision-making, similar Pearson's correlations were conducted comparing the amount of social interaction and the number of HR arm choices animals made immediately post-lesion on the effort-based decision-making task (Rudebeck et al., 2006b; Experiment 2, Block C; Fig. 5B).
Adam and colleagues (2013) have shown that a reward-based decision-making task is sensitive to treatment of profound apathy with a dopamine agonist in a patient with bilateral basal ganglia lesions as a result of ischaemic stroke.
First, the relationship between aggressive behaviour and impulsive choice, as measured by the number of HR arm choices made immediately post-lesion (Rudebeck et al., 2006b; Experiment 1, Block C) on the delay-based decision-making task, was assessed (Fig. 5A).
Nevertheless, we cannot completely exclude the possibility that a larger unilateral DA depletion could have produced some effect on the effort-based decision-making task.
The present study unveiled a novel effort-based decision-making task, the 'EEfRT', as a means of exploring effort-based decision-making in humans.
