High Frequency Activity In The Orbital Frontal Cortex Modulates With Mismatched Expectations During Gambling In Humans

During gambling, humans often begin by making decisions based on expected rewards and expected risks. However, expectations may not match actual outcomes. As gamblers keep track of their performance, they may feel more or less lucky, which then influences future betting decisions. Studies have identified the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) as a brain region that plays a significant role during risky decision making in humans. However, most human studies infer neural activation from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which has a poor temporal resolution. In particular, fMRI cannot detect activity from neuronal populations in the OFC, which may encode specific information about how a subject reacts to mismatched outcomes. In this preliminary study, four human subjects participated in a gambling task while local field potentials (LFPs), captured at a millisecond resolution, were recorded from the OFC. We analyzed high-frequency activity (HFA: >70 Hz) in the LFPs, as HFA has been shown to correlate to activation of neuronal populations. In 3 out of 4 subjects, HFA in OFC modulated between matched and mismatched trials as soon as the outcome of each bet was revealed, with modulations occurring at different times and directions depending on the anatomical location within the OFC.