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Data from: The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in reward valuation and future thinking during intertemporal choice

Cite this dataset

Ciaramelli, Elisa; Rosenbaum, R. Shayna (2021). Data from: The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in reward valuation and future thinking during intertemporal choice [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w3r2280qf

Abstract

The paper investigates the effect of reward magnitude and episodic future thinking (EFT) cues on delay discounting (DD) in 12 patients with lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC patients) and 41 healthy controls. In the Standard condition, participants viewed pairs of monetary amounts (of different magnitude) and were asked to make hypothetical choices between smaller-immediate rewards and larger rewards available after a delay. In the EFT condition, participants imagined personal events to occur at the delays associated with the larger-delayed rewards. We found that DD was steeper in vmPFC patients compared to controls, and not modulated by reward magnitude. However, EFT cues reduced DD in vmPFC patients as well as controls. 

This dataset reports individual and group data on the subjective value of small and large rewards at the different task delays, the resulting area under the curve (AuC), and the number of inconsistent choices during DD. 

A summary of the relevant variables and variable legenda is reported on the README file.   

Usage notes

The readme file contains an explanation of the structure of the excel file, and on  each of the variables in the dataset. Information on how the measurements were done can be found in the associated manuscript referenced above. 

Funding

Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, Award: 20174TPEFJ

National Institute on Aging, Award: R01AG058885

Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Award: CFREF-2015-00013