市场营销学系学术讲座（4月22日）

The earning-spending behaviour and the underlying neural mechanism

主讲人:杨天明 中国科学院脑科学与智能技术卓越创新中心研究员

主持人:殷云露，复旦大学管理学院副教授

时间：2025年4月22日（周二）14:00-15:30

地点：思源教授楼624室

Abstract:

Earning and spending are two fundamental behaviors in our daily economic lives. Yet the mechanisms by which the brain makes choices regarding earning and spending remain largely unexplored. We trained three macaque monkeys to perform a novel task where they could freely choose between earning virtual tokens and spending them for juice rewards by fixating on two targets, representing earning and spending, respectively. Tokens earned went into a virtual wallet, and the monkeys received juice rewards only when they chose to spend them. The rate of earning and spending was indicated by target shapes, which we varied across trials. We observed that the monkeys’ preference between earning and spending shifted accordingly. Notably, this preference was additionally biased by the monkeys' current token savings, with a higher tendency to spend when more tokens were in their wallet. To understand the neural basis of this earning-spending behavior, we recorded single-unit activity from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). While all three brain areas encoded key value information involved in the task, only the OFC neuronal activity reflected the earning-spending balance modulated by current token saving. Our study provides evidence that monkeys can understand sophisticated economic concepts of earning, spending, and savings in a token-based economy, and exhibit human-like decision-making patterns. The results demonstrate the important role of the prefrontal cortex, especially the OFC, in spending-earning decisions.

Bio：

杨天明，本科复旦大学生物化学专业毕业，博士就读于美国Baylor College of Medicine，其后在University of Washington 与NIH 从事科研工作。2013 年至今担任中国科学院脑科学与智能技术卓越创新中心研究员，博士生导师。长期从事抉择与认知的神经机制研究。主持或作为骨干承担了中科院先导专项、科技部2030科技创新、科技部国家重点研发计划专项、国家自然基金委面上项目、上海市市级科技重大项目等科研项目。其带领的课题组在抉择神经机制方面作出一系列国际领先的开创性成果，在猕猴中建立了感知觉和价值抉择以及复杂认知的行为范式，研究了前额叶和后顶叶等脑区的神经元在抉择和认知所进行的神经计算，并构建了抉择与认知的计算模型。其成果发表在Nature、Science、PNAS、Neuron等学术期刊。现任计算生物学领域权威杂志PLoS Computational Biology 编委。