Connectivity reveals relationship of brain areas for reward-guided learning and decision making in human and monkey frontal cortex

Significance Because of the interest in reward-guided learning and decision making, these neural mechanisms have been studied in both humans and monkeys. But whether and how key brain areas correspond between the two species has been uncertain. Areas in the two species can be compared as a function of the brain circuits in which they participate, which can be estimated from patterns of correlation in brain activity measured with functional MRI. Taking such measurements in 38 humans and 25 macaques, we identified fundamental similarities between the species and one human frontal area with no monkey counterpart. Altogether these findings suggest that everyday human decision-making capitalizes on a neural apparatus similar to the one that supports monkeys when foraging in the wild.