OBJECTIVE: To describe an organizational schema of human creativity. BACKGROUND: Previous research has concluded that creativity involves something novel and useful, but whether creativity is common or rare, domain-specific or domain-general, quantitative or qualitative, or personal or social remains unresolved. METHOD: Extant research from neurobiology, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroeconomics was used to generate a novel synthesis that explains human creative behavior. RESULTS: Creativity is the attempt to bridge the gap between what is and what should be. It emerges from the interplay of 5 commonly shared factors: motivation, perception, action, temperament, and social interaction. The reward value of what exists compared with an imagined possibility generates the motivational voltage that drives the creative effort. Action to attain the goal requires a dexterously executed plan, and dexterity levels are influenced by both practice effects and biologic biases. Temperament sustains the creative effort during periods of nonreward in anticipation of goal completion. Societal esthetics measure the success of creative efforts. Personal skill sets derived from nature and nurture vary between individuals and determine one's own creative phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Despite great qualitative and quantitative differences between individuals, the neurobiologic principles of creative behavior are the same from the least to the most creative among us.

Social reward dependence (RD) in humans is a stable pattern of attitudes and behaviour hypothesized to represent a favourable disposition towards social relationships and attachment as a personality dimension. It has been theorized that this long-term disposition to openness is linked to the capacity to process primary reward. Using brain structure measures from magnetic resonance imaging, and a measure of RD from Cloninger's temperament and character inventory, a self-reported questionnaire, in 41 male subjects sampled from a general population birth cohort, we investigated the neuro-anatomical basis of social RD. We found that higher social RD in men was significantly associated with increased gray matter density in the orbitofrontal cortex, basal ganglia and temporal lobes, regions that have been previously shown to be involved in processing of primary rewards. These findings provide evidence for a brain structural disposition to social interaction, and that sensitivity to social reward shares a common neural basis with systems for processing primary reward information.

Pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder reported in association with dopamine agonists used to treat Parkinson's disease. Although impulse control disorders are conceptualized as lying within the spectrum of addictions, little neurobiological evidence exists to support this belief. Functional imaging studies have consistently demonstrated abnormalities of dopaminergic function in patients with drug addictions, but to date no study has specifically evaluated dopaminergic function in Parkinson's disease patients with impulse control disorders. We describe results of a [(11)C] raclopride positron emission tomography (PET) study comparing dopaminergic function during gambling in Parkinson's disease patients, with and without pathological gambling, following dopamine agonists. Patients with pathological gambling demonstrated greater decreases in binding potential in the ventral striatum during gambling (13.9%) than control patients (8.1%), likely reflecting greater dopaminergic release. Ventral striatal bindings at baseline during control task were also lower in patients with pathological gambling. Although prior imaging studies suggest that abnormality in dopaminergic binding and dopamine release may be markers of vulnerability to addiction, this study presents the first evidence of these phenomena in pathological gambling. The emergence of pathological gambling in a number of Parkinson's disease patients may provide a model into the pathophysiology of this disorder.

Environmental stimuli constantly compete for human attention and in many cases decisions are made based on the affective meaning they convey. Although the network of structures involved in processing affective value has been well described, the specific contribution of these structures to the process by which affective value guides decision making is less well understood and is the focus of the present study. Thus, subjects read descriptions of individually tailored holidays, varying in incentive value and then made preference judgements, cognitive judgements or no decision. Choices made from an affective perspective, compared with those made from a cognitive perspective, activated a region of the anterior insula/operculum and also the anterior cingulate cortex. Furthermore, activity in perigenual, anterior cingulate cortex was correlated with subjective ratings of incentive value. In contrast, medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and a region of posterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), bordering on the insula, were found to be more active when affective stimuli guided response selection than when no selection was made. However, only the activity in the ventrolateral PFC was specific to response selection based on affective compared with cognitive judgements. It is proposed that the necessary introspection required to make subjective preference judgements is provided by the insula and cingulate cortices, while the medial OFC and posterior ventrolateral PFC/insula cortices contribute to stimulus evaluation and motivational aspects of response selection, respectively.

Recently, a rapidly growing approach within consumer research has developed under the label of "consumer neuroscience." Its goal is to use insights and methods from neuroscience to enhance the understanding of consumer behavior. In this paper we aim to provide an overview of questions of interest to consumer researchers, to present initial research findings, and to outline potential implications for consumer research. In order to do so, we first discuss the term "consumer neuroscience" and give a brief description of recently discussed issues in consumer research. We then provide a review and short description of initial empirical evidence from past studies in consumer neuroscience. Next, we present an example of how consumer research or, more specifically, customer loyalty research, may benefit from the consumer neuroscience approach. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential implications and suggestions for future research in the nascent field of consumer neuroscience.

Mental representations of social status hierarchy share properties with that of numbers. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the neural representation of numerical magnitude lies within a network of regions within inferior parietal cortex. However the neural basis of social status hierarchy remains unknown. Using fMRI, we studied subjects while they compared social status magnitude of people, objects and symbols, as well as numerical magnitude. Both social status and number comparisons recruited bilateral intraparietal sulci. We also observed a semantic distance effect whereby neural activity within bilateral intraparietal sulci increased for semantically close relative to far numerical and social status comparisons. These results demonstrate that social status and number comparisons recruit distinct and overlapping neuronal representations within human inferior parietal cortex.

In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, expectancy cues signaling emotional stimuli were used to study the personality trait of novelty seeking. BOLD responses to emotional expectancy were positively correlated with novelty-seeking scores in the medial prefrontal cortex. This correlation was strongest for the sub-dimension of exploratory excitability.

A framework for mental fatigue is proposed, that involves an integrated evaluation of both expected rewards and energetical costs associated with continued performance. Adequate evaluation of predicted rewards and potential risks of actions is essential for successful adaptive behaviour. However, while both rewards and punishments can motivate to engage in activities, both types of motivated behaviour are associated with energetical costs. We will review findings that suggest that the nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula and anterior cingulate cortex are involved evaluating both the potential rewards associated with performing a task, as well as assessing the energetical demands involved in task performance. Behaviour will only proceed if this evaluation turns out favourably towards spending (additional) energy. We propose that this evaluation of predicted rewards and energetical costs is central to the phenomenon of mental fatigue: people will no longer be motivated to engage in task performance when energetical costs are perceived to outweigh predicted rewards.

In recent studies, various regions of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) have been implicated in at least two potentially different mental functions: reasoning about the minds of other people (social cognition) and processing reward related information (affective evaluation). In this study, we test whether the activation in a specific area of the vmPFC, the para-anterior cingulate cortex (PACC), correlates with the reward value of stimuli in general or is specifically associated with social cognition. Participants performed a time estimation task with trial-to-trial feedback in which reward and socialcontext were manipulated separately. Reward was manipulated by giving either positive or negative feedback in the form of small squirts of fluid delivered orally. Social context was manipulated by instructing participants that positive and negative feedback was determined by another person or a computer. The data demonstrate a main effect of feedback, but not social context, in the PACC, suggesting that this area of the vmPFC serves a general function in evaluating and/or representing reward value. In addition, activity in a more anterior subregion of the vmPFC demonstrated reward-related sensitivity only in the social context. Another area that showed a similar interaction was the subgenual cingulate, but this region was only sensitive to negative feedback in the social condition. These findings suggest that, within the vmPFC, the PACC subserves primarily an affective function, whereas in other regions social context can modulate affective responses.

Every organism has to evaluate incoming stimuli according to their current and future significance. The immediate value of stimuli is coded by the reward system, but the processing of their long-term relevance implements a valuation system that implicates self-relatedness. The neuronal relationship between reward and self-relatedness remains unclear though. Using event-related functional MRI, we investigated whether self-relatedness induces neural activity in the reward system. Self-relatedness induced signal changes in the same regions that were recruited during reward including the bilateral nucleus accumbens (NACC), ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). The fMRI signal time courses revealed no differences in early BOLD signals between reward and self-relatedness. In contrast, both conditions differed in late BOLD signals with self-relatedness showing higher signal intensity. In sum, our findings indicate sustained recruitment of the reward system during self-relatedness. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of the reward-based nature of our self.

Emotions have been shown to modulate memory processes. However, the neuronal substrate underlying these modulatory effects is largely unknown. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated whether the context of emotional encoding modulates brain activation predictive for subsequent recall of emotionally neutral material. While inferior frontal activation predicted recall in general, our data show that in a positive encoding context, recall was predicted by activation of right anterior parahippocampal and extrastriate visual brain areas, whereas in a negative encoding context, recall was predicted by activation of the amygdala. Thus, we could demonstrate that successful episodic encoding is differentially modulated by emotional context. These results contribute to the understanding of the interaction of emotion and cognition and moreover are of general relevance for studies of episodic memory.

Functional imaging studies have shown that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display prefrontal and amygdala dysfunction while viewing or listening to emotional or traumatic stimuli. The study examined for the first time the functional neuroanatomy of attachment trauma in BPD patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the telling of individual stories. A group of 11 female BPD patients and 17 healthy female controls, matched for age and education, told stories in response to a validated set of seven attachment pictures while being scanned. Group differences in narrative and neural responses to "monadic" pictures (characters facing attachment threats alone) and "dyadic" pictures (interaction between characters in an attachment context) were analyzed. Behavioral narrative data showed that monadic pictures were significantly more traumatic for BPD patients than for controls. As hypothesized BPD patients showed significantly more anterior midcingulate cortex activation in response to monadic pictures than controls. In response to dyadic pictures patients showed more activation of the right superior temporal sulcus and less activation of the right parahippocampal gyrus compared to controls. Our results suggest evidence for potential neural mechanisms of attachment trauma underlying interpersonal symptoms of BPD, i.e. fearful and painful intolerance of aloneness, hypersensitivity to social environment, and reduced positive memories of dyadic interactions.

This exploratory study is the first to examine the neural correlates of attachment status in adults. The study examined the feasibility of assessing attachment narratives in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) environment by challenging subjects to tell attachment stories to specific attachment pictures from the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) while being scanned. We investigated theoretically derived hypotheses regarding predicted differences in the brain activation patterns of individuals whose attachment status was organized (resolved) versus disorganized (unresolved) with respect to attachment trauma (e.g., as associated with loss through death, abuse, threat of abandonment). Adult attachment was assessed using the AAP, a new representational attachment measure that we thought might be suitable for use in the fMRI environment. This measure was used to obtain a preliminary picture of the neural processes associated with the activation of attachment in 11 healthy female adults. Results are reported from a second-level analysis (p < 0.001 uncorrected) and confirm that the AAP is a feasible measure for use in a neuroimaging environment. Cerebral activation during continuous speech yielded results consistent with the literature. Brain activation was demonstrated in expected visual and semantic brain regions. Furthermore, we found that the rate of articulation was positively correlated with activation in the right superior temporal gyrus. The results of theoretically derived attachment hypotheses showed no differences at the chosen level of significance when comparing the 'all attachment pictures' effect between both groups (resolved vs. unresolved). More interestingly, we found a significant interaction effect between the sequence of pictures and attachment category. Only the unresolved participants showed increasing activation of medial temporal regions, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, in the course of the AAP task. This pattern was demonstrated especially at the end of the AAP task where the pictures are drawn to portray traumatic situations. We interpret these results as confirming our hypothesis, linking unresolved attachment to emotional dysregulation of the attachment system. These results are discussed in relation to assessing attachment in an fMRI environment and future research in this area. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Reward probability has been shown to be coded by dopamine neurons in monkeys. Phasic neuronal activation not only increased linearly with reward probability upon expectation of reward, but also varied monotonically across the range of probabilities upon omission or receipt of rewards, therefore modeling discrepancies between expected and received rewards. Such a discrete coding of prediction error has been suggested to be one of the basic principles of learning. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show that the human dopamine system codes reward probability and prediction error in a similar way. We used a simple delayed incentive task with a discrete range of reward probabilities from 0%-100%. Activity in the nucleus accumbens of human subjects strongly resembled the phasic responses found in monkey neurons. First, during the expectation period of the task, the fMRI signal in the human nucleus accumbens (NAc) increased linearly with the probability of the reward. Second, during the outcome phase, activity in the NAc coded the prediction error as a linear function of reward probabilities. Third, we found that the Nac signal was correlated with individual differences in sensation seeking and novelty seeking, indicating a link between individual fMRI activation of the dopamine system in a probabilistic paradigm and personality traits previously suggested to be linked with reward processing. We therefore identify two different covariates that model activity in the Nac: specific properties of a psychological task and individual character traits.

Neuroimaging studies in humans have shown that different working memory (WM) tasks recruit a common bilateral fronto-parietal cortical network. Animal studies as well as neuroimaging studies in humans have suggested that this network, in particular the prefrontal cortex, is preferentially recruited when material from different domains (e.g. spatial information or verbal/object information) has to be memorized. Early imaging studies have suggested qualitative dissociations in the prefrontal cortex for spatial and object/verbal WM, either in a left-right or a ventral-dorsal dimension. However, results from different studies are inconsistent. Moreover, recent fMRI studies have failed to find evidence for domain dependent dissociations of WM-related activity in prefrontal cortex. Here we present evidence from two independent fMRI studies using physically identical stimuli in a verbal and spatial WM task showing that domain dominance for WM does indeed exist, although only in the form of quantitative differences in activation and not in the form of a dissociation with different prefrontal regions showing mutually exclusive activation in different domains. Our results support a mixed dimension model of domain dominance for WM within the prefrontal cortex, with left ventral prefrontal cortex (PFC) supporting preferentially verbal WM and right dorsal PFC supporting preferentially spatial WM. The concept of domain dominance is discussed in the light of recent theories of prefrontal cortex function.

Hypofrontality and decreased lateralization have been two major, albeit controversial, results from functional neuroimaging studies of schizophrenia. We used fMRI to study cortical activation during a verbal and spatial working memory (WM) task (2-back) in 15 inpatients acutely ill with schizophrenia and 15 matched control subjects. We hypothesized (i) hypofrontality in patients in both tasks and (ii) decreased lateralization of prefrontal activation in patients under the assumption that, in controls, left prefrontal cortex (PFC) is engaged preferentially in the verbal task (verbal domain dominance) and the right prefrontal cortex is engaged preferentially in the spatial task (spatial domain dominance). Our results showed no significant differences in frontal activation between controls and patients, i.e. no hypofrontality in patients, even at a very liberal threshold (p<0.01). This may be explained by the fact that nearly all patients studied received atypical neuroleptics. Nonetheless, we found evidence for more subtle, domain-related prefrontal dysfunction. Whereas controls showed verbal WM domain dominance in left inferior frontal cortex and spatial WM domain dominance in right prefrontal cortex, these domain dominance effects were absent in the patient group, i.e. there were no lateralization effects. Finally, only patients showed an inverse correlation between performance and right prefrontal activation in verbal WM. We conclude that the finding of hypofrontality may depend on the medication of the patients and that there is prefrontal dysfunction even in the absence of hypofrontality.

Individuals carrying the short allele of a common polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) exhibit heightened amygdala responses to passive stimulation with aversive emotional material. In turn, the level of amygdala activation in response to emotion can be decreased by will, for example by using cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In the present study, 37 female subjects (s-carriers: n = 21; l/l homozygotes: n = 16) performed an emotion regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine whether cognitive emotion regulation can modulate the genetically determined amygdala hyperreactivity in 5-HTTLPR short allele carriers. Our results demonstrate that cognitive emotion regulation diminishes the difference in amygdala reactivity to threat-related stimuli between 5-HTTLPR genotype groups. Furthermore, we also provide evidence that the effect of cognitive regulation is mediated through altered coupling between the amygdala and prefrontal regulatory regions. Our findings demonstrate that while the presence of the 5-HTTLPR short allele leads to heightened responses in the amygdala, cognitive regulation can modify genetically mediated effects upon brain function by volitionally altering prefrontal-amygdala connectivity.

Emotions can enhance memory which is on the one hand advantageous, but on the other hand may be detrimental in the long term, for example in the case of traumatic events. Although cognitive emotion regulation may reduce emotion experience and corresponding neural activation, at present little is known about its influence on long term memory. We investigated memory for emotional pictures in healthy female subjects one year after voluntary emotion regulation using fMRI. Whereas memory performance was not affected by regulation, our data revealed a dissociation of brain regions involved in memory encoding and recognition depending on whether emotional engagement during encoding had been downregulated. Emotional engagement during encoding resulted in a long-term subsequent memory effect in mesolimbic brain regions and hippocampus, and in recognition-related activation in the amygdala. In contrast, when negative emotions had been downregulated during encoding memory performance was predicted by prefrontal activation. Our data suggest that memory for emotionally encoded stimuli is supported by emotional re-activation, whereas memory for successfully encoded items during emotion regulation is rather supported by recognition of features and cognitive contents. These results contribute to research on long term effects of emotion regulation in everyday life and open new avenues to understand and possibly influence traumatic memory traces.

OBJECTIVE: To study the mesolimbic dopamine system during expectation and receipt or omission of rewards in partially remitted patients with schizophrenia treated with the atypical antipsychotic olanzapine. METHODS: We studied 16 patients with a current episode of schizophrenia, all treated with the atypical drug olanzapine, and 16 healthy subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subjects performed a delayed incentive paradigm with monetary rewards. RESULTS: During reward expectation, both, patients with schizophrenia and healthy control subjects, showed activation of the ventral striatum and midbrain in the vicinity of the ventral tegmental area. Significant categorical group differences emerged in the anterior cingulate cortex with only healthy controls showing increasing activation with increasing reward. In the patients, activation of this region was inversely correlated with positive symptoms. During outcome, both, patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls, showed activation of the ventral striatum and the mesial prefrontal cortex. Significant categorical group differences emerged in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex for the salience contrast with healthy controls showing a U-shaped activation curve, i.e., higher activation for either omission or receipt of reward compared to no reward. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings partially support the current concept of dopaminergic dysfunction in schizophrenia, suggesting a rather hyperactive mesolimbic dopamine system and reduced prefrontal activation, at least in partially remitted patients treated with atypical antipsychotics.

In addiction, loss of prefrontal inhibitory control is believed to contribute to impulsivity. To improve cognitive therapy approaches, it is important to determine whether cognitive control strategies can generally influence reward processing at the neural level. We investigated the effects of one such strategy-namely, reappraisal (distancing from feelings)-on neural reward processing in 16 healthy subjects by utilizing event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a monetary incentive delay task, expected reward value (expecting to win euro0.50 vs. euro0.10) and outcome valence (win vs. omission) were varied. An attenuation of expected value and a modulation of prediction error (PE) coding caused by distancing were found in right versus left ventral striatum (VST) in the expectation versus outcome period, respectively. Distancing from reward feelings recruited a right hemispheric fronto-parietal network. Moreover, self-reported reappraisal success (decrease of feelings by distancing) showed a trend toward positive correlation with activation in the rostral cingulate zone and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, both part of the regulation network. Our results expand upon recent findings by showing that cognitive control over reward processing impacts not only the expectation period but also the reward signals in the outcome period. Moreover, increased recruitment of prefrontal reflective subsystems might enhance deliberate control over both reward processing and hedonic experience.

In modern economy the customer is confronted with a huge amount of consumer goods. In this situation, culturally based brands seem to play an important role in establishing strong emotional bonds between customers and goods and to guide people's economic behavior by biasing selections and preference decisions based on affect. Recently, neuroscientific approaches have demonstrated that cultural objects like brands or brand-related behavior may successfully be investigated with neuroimaging tools like fMRI. First studies suggested that structures associated with the reward circuit (striatum) and the dorsolateral part of the prefrontal cortex may be involved when perceiving a favorite brand. Hence, brands that have been associated with appetitive stimuli due to marketing efforts or cultural factors seem to engage similar brain networks than artificially associated reward stimuli. However, brands have different and complex meanings in our life far beyond representing objects of desire. For example, the possession of goods from certain kinds of brands often is used to mark the social state of the owner and to distinguish him or her from other groups. In particular, luxury goods often seem to have this function. Recent neuroimaging results support this observation by showing that viewing logos of luxury brands is associated with brain activity in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, a region known to be associated with self-centered cognitions. Thus, it seems that brands of luxury goods improve self-relevant thoughts, pointing to the role of luxury brands to mark the superior position of the owner in society. These results demonstrate that cultural symbols like brands can successfully be examined with neuroimaging approaches. Thus, along with advanced cultural theories, neuroeconomics may provide important contributions to the understanding of brand-related or economic behavior.

The experience of being liked is a key social event and fundamental to motivating human behavior, though little is known about its neural underpinnings. In this study, we examined the experience of being liked in a group of 15- to 24-year-old: a cohort for whom forming friendships has a great degree of salience, and for whom the explicit representation of relationships is familiar from their frequent use of social networking technologies. Study participants (n = 19) were led to believe that other participants had formed an opinion on their likability based on their appearance in a photograph, and during fMRI scanning viewed the photographs of people who had purportedly responded favorably to them (alongside photographs of control participants). Results indicated that being liked activated primary reward- and self-related regions, including the nucleus accumbens, midbrain (in an area corresponding to the ventral tegmentum), ventromedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex (including retrosplenial cortex), amygdala, and insula/opercular cortex. Participants showed greater activation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala in response to being liked by people that they regarded highly compared to those they regarded less so. Finally, being liked by the opposite compared to the same gender activated the right caudal orbitofrontal cortex and right anterior insula: areas important for the representation of primary somatic rewards. This study demonstrates that neural response to being liked has features that are consistent with response to other rewarding events, but it has additional features that reflect its intrinsically interpersonal character. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009.(c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Abstract Nutritional state (e.g. fasted vs. fed) and different food stimuli (e.g. high-calorie vs. low-calorie, or appetizing vs. bland foods) are both recognized to change activity in brain reward systems. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we have studied the interaction between nutritional state and different food stimuli on brain food reward systems. We examined how blood oxygen level-dependent activity within a priori regions of interest varied while viewing pictures of high-calorie and low-calorie foods. Pictures of non-food household objects were included as control stimuli. During scanning, subjects rated the appeal of each picture. Twenty non-obese healthy adults [body mass index 22.1 +/- 0.5 kg/m(2)(mean +/- SEM), age range 19-35 years, 10 male] were scanned on two separate mornings between 11:00 and 12:00 h, once after eating a filling breakfast ('fed': 1.6 +/- 0.1 h since breakfast), and once after an overnight fast but skipping breakfast ('fasted': 15.9 +/- 0.3 h since supper) in a randomized cross-over design. Fasting selectively increased activation to pictures of high-calorie over low-calorie foods in the ventral striatum, amygdala, anterior insula, and medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Furthermore, fasting enhanced the subjective appeal of high-calorie more than low-calorie foods, and the change in appeal bias towards high-calorie foods was positively correlated with medial and lateral OFC activation. These results demonstrate an interaction between homeostatic and hedonic aspects of feeding behaviour, with fasting biasing brain reward systems towards high-calorie foods.

Humans appear to have an inherent prosocial tendency toward one another in that we often take pleasure in seeing others succeed. This fact is almost certainly exploited by game shows, yet why watching others win elicits a pleasurable vicarious rewarding feeling in the absence of personal economic gain is unclear. One explanation is that game shows use contestants who have similarities to the viewing population, thereby kindling kin-motivated responses (for example, prosocial behavior). Using a game show-inspired paradigm, we show that the interactions between the ventral striatum and anterior cingulate cortex subserve the modulation of vicarious reward by similarity, respectively. Our results support studies showing that similarity acts as a proximate neurobiological mechanism where prosocial behavior extends to unrelated strangers.

In both the wild and the laboratory, animals' preferences for one course of action over another reflect not just reward expectations but also the cost in terms of effort that must be invested in pursuing the course of action. The ventral striatum and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACCd) are implicated in the making of cost-benefit decisions in the rat, but there is little information about how effort costs are processed and influence calculations of expected net value in other mammals including humans. We performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to determine whether and where activity in the human brain was available to guide effort-based cost-benefit valuation. Subjects were scanned while they performed a series of effortful actions to obtain secondary reinforcers. At the beginning of each trial, subjects were presented with one of eight different visual cues that they had learned indicated how much effort the course of action would entail and how much reward could be expected at its completion. Cue-locked activity in the ventral striatum and midbrain reflected the net value of the course of action, signaling the expected amount of reward discounted by the amount of effort to be invested. Activity in ACCd also reflected the interaction of both expected reward and effort costs. Posterior orbitofrontal and insular activity, however, only reflected the expected reward magnitude. The ventral striatum and anterior cingulate cortex may be the substrate of effort-based cost-benefit valuation in primates as well as in rats.