Biological profits of irrational computations in the orbitofrontal cortex

Irrational decisions reflect robustness constraints on value computations implemented by orbitofrontal circuits | bioRxiv /* */ /* */ <!-- <!-- /*! * yepnope1.5.4 * (c) WTFPL, GPLv2 */ (function(a,b,c){function d(a){return"[object Function]"==o.call(a)}function e(a){return"string"==typeof a}function f(){}function g(a){return!a||"loaded"==a||"complete"==a||"uninitialized"==a}function h(){var a=p.shift();q=1,a?a.t?m(function(){("c"==a.t?B.injectCss:B.injectJs)(a.s,0,a.a,a.x,a.e,1)},0):(a(),h()):q=0}function i(a,c,d,e,f,i,j){function k(b){if(!o&&g(l.readyState)&&(u.r=o=1,!q&&h(),l.onload=l.onreadystatechange=null,b)){"img"!=a&&m(function(){t.removeChild(l)},50);for(var d in y[c])y[c].hasOwnProperty(d)&&y[c][d].onload()}}var j=j||B.errorTimeout,l=b.createElement(a),o=0,r=0,u={t:d,s:c,e:f,a:i,x:j};1===y[c]&&(r=1,y[c]=[]),"object"==a?l.data=c:(l.src=c,l.type=a),l.width=l.height="0",l.onerror=l.onload=l.onreadystatechange=function(){k.call(this,r)},p.splice(e,0,u),"img"!=a&&(r||2===y[c]?(t.insertBefore(l,s?null:n),m(k,j)):y[c].push(l))}function j(a,b,c,d,f){return q=0,b=b||"j",e(a)?i("c"==b?v:u,a,b,this.i++,c,d,f):(p.splice(this.i++,0,a),1==p.length&&h()),this}function k(){var a=B;return a.loader={load:j,i:0},a}var l=b.documentElement,m=a.setTimeout,n=b.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],o={}.toString,p=[],q=0,r="MozAppearance"in l.style,s=r&&!!b.createRange().compareNode,t=s?l:n.parentNode,l=a.opera&&"[object Opera]"==o.call(a.opera),l=!!b.attachEvent&&!l,u=r?"object":l?"script":"img",v=l?"script":u,w=Array.isArray||function(a){return"[object Array]"==o.call(a)},x=[],y={},z={timeout:function(a,b){return b.length&&(a.timeout=b[0]),a}},A,B;B=function(a){function b(a){var a=a.split("!"),b=x.length,c=a.pop(),d=a.length,c={url:c,origUrl:c,prefixes:a},e,f,g;for(f=0;f<d;f++)g=a[f].split("="),(e=z[g.shift()])&&(c=e(c,g));for(f=0;f<b;f++)c=x[f](c);return c}function g(a,e,f,g,h){var i=b(a),j=i.autoCallback;i.url.split(".").pop().split("?").shift(),i.bypass||(e&&(e=d(e)?e:e[a]||e[g]||e[a.split("/").pop().split("?")[0]]),i.instead?i.instead(a,e,f,g,h):(y[i.url]?i.noexec=!0:y[i.url]=1,f.load(i.url,i.forceCSS||!i.forceJS&&"css"==i.url.split(".").pop().split("?").shift()?"c":c,i.noexec,i.attrs,i.timeout),(d(e)||d(j))&&f.load(function(){k(),e&&e(i.origUrl,h,g),j&&j(i.origUrl,h,g),y[i.url]=2})))}function h(a,b){function c(a,c){if(a){if(e(a))c||(j=function(){var a=[].slice.call(arguments);k.apply(this,a),l()}),g(a,j,b,0,h);else if(Object(a)===a)for(n in m=function(){var b=0,c;for(c in a)a.hasOwnProperty(c)&&b++;return b}(),a)a.hasOwnProperty(n)&&(!c&&!--m&&(d(j)?j=function(){var a=[].slice.call(arguments);k.apply(this,a),l()}:j[n]=function(a){return function(){var b=[].slice.call(arguments);a&&a.apply(this,b),l()}}(k[n])),g(a[n],j,b,n,h))}else!c&&l()}var h=!!a.test,i=a.load||a.both,j=a.callback||f,k=j,l=a.complete||f,m,n;c(h?a.yep:a.nope,!!i),i&&c(i)}var i,j,l=this.yepnope.loader;if(e(a))g(a,0,l,0);else if(w(a))for(i=0;i (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];var j=d.createElement(s);var dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.src='//www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;j.type='text/javascript';j.async=true;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-M677548'); Skip to main content Home About Submit ALERTS / RSS Search for this keyword Advanced Search New Results Irrational decisions reflect robustness constraints on value computations implemented by orbitofrontal circuits View ORCID Profile Juliette Bénon , View ORCID Profile Mathias Pessiglione , View ORCID Profile Fabien Vinckier , View ORCID Profile Jean Daunizeau doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.10.664081 Juliette Bénon Paris Brain Institute Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Juliette Bénon For correspondence: juliettebenon{at}gmail.com Mathias Pessiglione Paris Brain Institute Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Mathias Pessiglione Fabien Vinckier Paris Brain Institute Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Fabien Vinckier Jean Daunizeau Paris Brain Institute Find this author on Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for this author on this site ORCID record for Jean Daunizeau Abstract Info/History Metrics Supplementary material Preview PDF Abstract Making good decisions is essential for survival and success, yet humans and animals often exhibit perplexing irrational decision-making whose biological origin remains poorly understood. Recent empirical and computational work suggests that altered computations in perceptual, motor and memory systems in the brain may arise from informational, metabolic or robustness constraints on their internal connectivity structure. However, whether and how such neurobiological constraints may have molded the architecture of decision systems (such as the orbitofrontal cortex) and eventually distorted decision-relevant computations, remains largely unknown. We first train cohorts of artificial neural nets to perform ten variants of rational decision-relevant computations. Those variants that operate under a specific option-encoding format exhibit most of the electrophysiological coding properties observed in orbitofrontal neurons of monkeys making decisions under risk. We then distort these neural nets' internal wiring to reproduce monkeys' irrational choices. This induces deterministic spillover interferences in decision-relevant computations that generalize across individuals, at both the behavioral and neural level. Importantly, although irrational nets do not seem to bring informational or metabolic benefits, they display enhanced tolerance to damage and noise when compared to their rational counterparts. This suggests that some forms of irrational behavior may be the incidental outcome of distal evolutionary pressure on the robustness of orbitofrontal circuits. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Footnotes Text and figures entirely revised; author list updated. Copyright The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license . View the discussion thread. Back to top Previous Next Posted May 22, 2026. 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Share Irrational decisions reflect robustness constraints on value computations implemented by orbitofrontal circuits Juliette Bénon , Mathias Pessiglione , Fabien Vinckier , Jean Daunizeau bioRxiv 2025.07.10.664081; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.10.664081 Share This Article: Copy Citation Tools Irrational decisions reflect robustness constraints on value computations implemented by orbitofrontal circuits Juliette Bénon , Mathias Pessiglione , Fabien Vinckier , Jean Daunizeau bioRxiv 2025.07.10.664081; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.10.664081 Citation Manager Formats BibTeX Bookends EasyBib EndNote (tagged) EndNote 8 (xml) Medlars Mendeley Papers RefWorks Tagged Ref Manager RIS Zotero Tweet Widget Facebook Like Google Plus One Subject Area Neuroscience Subject Areas All Articles Animal Behavior and Cognition (7635) Biochemistry (17691) Bioengineering (13892) Bioinformatics (41937) Biophysics (21452) Cancer Biology (18588) Cell Biology (25504) Clinical Trials (138) Developmental Biology (13378) Ecology (19899) Epidemiology (2067) Evolutionary Biology (24320) Genetics (15609) Genomics (22506) Immunology (17736) Microbiology (40394) Molecular Biology (17181) Neuroscience (88605) Paleontology (666) Pathology (2832) Pharmacology and Toxicology (4824) Physiology (7641) Plant Biology (15156) Scientific Communication and Education (2045) Synthetic Biology (4294) Systems Biology (9825) Zoology (2271)