Motivated control processes help us optimize our behaviour to deal with competing task demands: seeking rewards while minimizing the associated effort. A new study in Nature Human Behaviour argues that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a key contributor to motivated control, tracks a computational quantity akin to surprise that is generated when events differ from our expectations.
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Bachman, M.D., Huettel, S.A. Motivated control as a bridge between neuroeconomics and cognitive neuroscience. Nat Hum Behav 4, 332–333 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0794-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0794-0