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Decision making in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART): Anterior cingulate cortex signals loss aversion but not the infrequency of risky choices
- Source :
- Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. 12:479-490
- Publication Year :
- 2012
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2012.
-
Abstract
- The inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula (IFG/AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are key regions involved in risk appraisal during decision making, but accounts of how these regions contribute to decision making under risk remain contested. To help clarify the roles of these and other related regions, we used a modified version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Lejuez et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 75-84, 2002) to distinguish between decision-making and feedback-related processes when participants decided to pursue a gain as the probability of loss increased parametrically. Specifically, we set out to test whether the ACC and IFG/AI regions correspond to loss aversion at the time of decision making in a way that is not confounded with either reward-seeking or infrequency effects. When participants chose to discontinue inflating the balloon (win option), we observed greater ACC and mainly bilateral IFG/AI activity at the time of decision as the probability of explosion increased, consistent with increased loss aversion but inconsistent with an infrequency effect. In contrast, we found robust vmPFC activity when participants chose to continue inflating the balloon (risky option), consistent with reward seeking. However, in the cingulate and in mainly bilateral IFG regions, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent activation decreased when participants chose to inflate the balloon as the probability of explosion increased, findings that are consistent with a reduced loss aversion signal. Our results highlight the existence of distinct reward-seeking and loss-averse signals during decision making, as well as the importance of distinguishing between decision and feedback signals.
- Subjects :
- Male
Adolescent
Experimental psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Decision Making
Inferior frontal gyrus
Neuropsychological Tests
Balloon
behavioral disciplines and activities
Gyrus Cinguli
Article
Developmental psychology
Task (project management)
Young Adult
Behavioral Neuroscience
Risk-Taking
Reward
Loss aversion
medicine
Humans
Set (psychology)
Anterior cingulate cortex
Brain Mapping
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
medicine.anatomical_structure
Risk appraisal
Female
Psychology
psychological phenomena and processes
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1531135X and 15307026
- Volume :
- 12
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....583ea7bc7c103289a4d85e84359dbb35