The finding that the ORN separated the loss against gain (in both gender) and the ORP activity distinguished the amount 50 against 10 (in males) suggests that the ORN is more sensitive to the valence (loss-gain dimension) and ORP is more sensitive to the amount (large-small dimension). Further, the peak activity of the ORN was similar (anterior during loss and posterior during gain) across genders. Although fMRI studies differ in terms of brain regions associated with loss and gain, it is possible that there are dissociable brain systems/circuits for processing abstract reward and punishments [20] as our study has suggested. However, many of the imaging studies did not confirm our findings. For example, Yacubian et al. [45] reported that the gain-related reward delivery system was represented in the ventral striatum while the loss-related expected value and the associated prediction error was represented in the amygdala. Further imaging studies should, however, attempt to elicit specific outcome processing brain areas or network(s) involved during the levels of quality (e.g., loss and gain) and quantity (e.g., 50 and 10) of outcomes without the confound of context dependence (e.g., ‘relative’ loss and ‘relative’ gain).
