Neural markers of loss aversion in resting-state brain activity

Striatal GABA levels correlate with risk sensitivity in monetary loss

Background

Decision-making under risk is a common challenge. It is known that risk-taking behavior varies between contexts of reward and punishment, yet the mechanisms underlying this asymmetry in risk sensitivity remain unclear.

Methods

This study used a monetary task to investigate neurochemical mechanisms and brain dynamics underpinning risk sensitivity. Twenty-eight participants engaged in a task requiring selection of visual stimuli to maximize monetary gains and minimize monetary losses. We modeled participant trial-and-error processes using reinforcement learning.

Results

Participants with higher subjective utility parameters showed risk preference in the gain domain (r = -0.59) and risk avoidance in the loss domain (r = -0.77). Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) revealed that risk avoidance in the loss domain was associated with γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels in the ventral striatum (r = -0.42), but not in the insula (r = -0.15). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested whether risk-sensitive brain dynamics contribute to participant risky choices. Energy landscape analyses demonstrated that higher switching rates between brain states, including the striatum and insula, were correlated with risk avoidance in the loss domain (r = -0.59), a relationship not observed in the gain domain (r = -0.02).

Conclusions

These findings from MRS and fMRI suggest that distinct mechanisms are involved in gain/loss decision making, mediated by subcortical neurometabolite levels and brain dynamic transitions.

Material Hardship Predicts Response Bias in Loss-Averse Decisions: The Roles of Anxiety and Cognitive Control

Income poverty is associated with an enhanced tendency to avoid losses in economic decisions, which can be driven by a response bias (risk avoidance) and a valuation bias (loss aversion). However, the impact of non-income dimensions of poverty on these biases remains unclear. The current study tested the impact of material hardship on these biases, and the mediating effects of anxiety, depression, and cognitive control in these associations. Healthy adults (N = 188) completed questionnaire and behavioral measures of the variables. Results of regression-based analyses showed that participants who reported higher material hardship exhibited greater response bias, but not valuation bias. This effect was mediated by anxiety. Although material hardship predicted lower cognitive control, cognitive control did not mediate the association between material hardship and either type of bias. These findings suggest that material hardship may lead to economic decision-making biases because it impacts emotional states rather than cognitive control.

Cognitive reappraisal of food craving and emotions: a coordinate-based meta-analysis of fMRI studies

Growing evidence supports the effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal in down-regulating food desire. Still, the neural bases of food craving down-regulation via reappraisal, as well as their degree of overlap vs specificity compared with emotion down-regulation, remain unclear. We addressed this gap through activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies on the neural bases of (i) food craving down-regulation and (ii) emotion down-regulation, alongside conjunction and subtraction analyses among the resulting maps. Exploratory meta-analyses on activations related to food viewing compared with active regulation and up-regulation of food craving have also been performed. Food and emotion down-regulation via reappraisal consistently engaged overlapping activations in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal, posterior parietal, pre-supplementary motor and lateral posterior temporal cortices, mainly in the left hemisphere. Its distinctive association with the right anterior/posterior insula and left inferior frontal gyrus suggests that food craving down-regulation entails a more extensive integration of interoceptive information about bodily states and greater inhibitory control over the appetitive urge towards food compared with emotion down-regulation. This evidence is suggestive of unique interoceptive and motivational components elicited by food craving reappraisal, associated with distinctive patterns of fronto-insular activity. These results might inform theoretical models of food craving regulation and prompt novel therapeutic interventions for obesity and eating disorders.

Testing the effect of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation of the insular cortex to modulate decision-making and executive control

Introduction

Previous neuroimaging evidence highlighted the role of the insular and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in conflict monitoring and decision-making, thus supporting the translational implications of targeting these regions in neuro-stimulation treatments for clinical purposes. Recent advancements of targeting and modeling procedures for high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) provided methodological support for the stimulation of otherwise challenging targets, and a previous study confirmed that cathodal HD-tDCS of the dACC modulates executive control and decision-making metrics in healthy individuals. On the other hand, evidence on the effect of stimulating the insula is still needed.

Methods

We used a modeling/targeting procedure to investigate the effect of stimulating the posterior insula on Flanker and gambling tasks assessing, respectively, executive control and both loss and risk aversion in decision-making. HD-tDCS was applied through 6 small electrodes delivering anodal, cathodal or sham stimulation for 20 min in a within-subject offline design with three separate sessions.

Results

Bayesian statistical analyses on Flanker conflict effect, as well as loss and risk aversion, provided moderate evidence for the null model (i.e., absence of HD-tDCS modulation).

Discussion

These findings suggest that further research on the effect of HD-tDCS on different regions is required to define reliable targets for clinical applications. While modeling and targeting procedures for neuromodulation in clinical research could lead to innovative protocols for stand-alone treatment, or possibly in combination with cognitive training, assessing the effectiveness of insula stimulation might require sensitive metrics other than those investigated here.

RISK aversion in Italian forensic and non-forensic patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders

BACKGROUND

Goal-directed decision-making is a central component of the broader reward and motivation system, and requires the ability to dynamically integrate both positive and negative feedback from the environment in order to maximize rewards and minimize losses over time. Altered decision-making processes, in which individuals fail to consider the negative consequences of their decisions on both themselves and others, may play a role in driving antisocial behaviour.

AIM

The main study aim was to investigate possible differences in loss and risk aversion across matched patients, all with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD), but who varied according to whether they had a history of serious interpersonal violence or not, and a sample of healthy controls with no history of violence.

RESULTS

The sample included 14 forensic and 21 non-forensic patients with SSD, and 41 healthy controls. Among the three decision-making variables under investigation, risk aversion was the only significant predictor of membership of the three groups, with greater risk aversion among non-forensic patients with SSD compared to healthy controls. No differences were observed across groups in loss aversion and choice consistency.

CONCLUSIONS

This evidence suggests a new potential treatment target for rehabilitative measures aimed at achieving functional improvements in patients with SSD by selectively leveraging the neuro-cognitive processing of reward.

Neural bases of loss aversion when choosing for oneself versus known or unknown others

Despite the ubiquitous interdependence between one's own decisions and others' welfare, and the controversial evidence on the behavioral effect of choosing for others, the neural bases of making decisions for another versus oneself remain unexplored. We investigated whether loss aversion (LA; the tendency to avoid losses over approaching equivalent gains) is modulated by (i) choosing for oneself, other individuals, or both; (ii) knowing or not knowing the other recipients; or (iii) an interaction between these factors. We used fMRI to assess the brain activations associated with choosing whether to accept or reject mixed gambles, either for oneself, for another player, or both, in 2 groups of 28 participants who had or had not briefly interacted with the other players before scanning. Participants displayed higher LA for choices involving their payoff compared with those affecting only the payoff of other, known, players. This "social" modulation of decision-making was found to engage the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and its inhibitory connectivity to the middle cingulate cortex. This pattern might underpin decision-making for known others via self-other distinction processes associated with dorsomedial prefrontal areas, with this in turn promoting the inhibition of socially oriented responses through the downregulation of the midcingulate node of the empathy network.

Effect of exogenous testosterone in the context of energy deficit on risky choice: Behavioural and neural evidence from males

Previous research has shown greater risk aversion when people make choices about lives than cash. We tested the hypothesis that compared to placebo, exogenous testosterone administration would lead to riskier choices about cash than lives, given testosterone's association with financial risk-taking and reward sensitivity. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial was conducted to test this hypothesis (Clinical Trials Registry: NCT02734238, www.clinicaltrials.gov). We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 50 non-obese males before and shortly after 28 days of severe exercise-and-diet-induced energy deficit, during which testosterone (200 mg testosterone enanthate per week in sesame oil) or placebo (sesame seed oil only) was administered. Because we expected circulating testosterone levels to be reduced due to severe energy deficit, testosterone administration served a restorative function to mitigate the impact of energy deficit on testosterone levels. The fMRI task involved making choices under uncertainty for lives and cash. We also manipulated whether the outcomes were presented as gains or losses. Consistent with prospect theory, we observed the reflection effect such that participants were more risk averse when outcomes were presented as gains than losses. Brain activation in the thalamus covaried with individual differences in exhibiting the reflection effect. Testosterone did not impact choice, but it increased sensitivity to negative feedback following risky choices. These results suggest that exogenous testosterone administration in the context of energy deficit can impact some aspects of risky choice, and that individual differences in the reflection effect engage a brain structure involved in processing emotion, reward and risk.

Functional Coherence in Intrinsic Frontal Executive Networks Predicts Cognitive Impairments in Alcohol Use Disorder

Growing evidence highlights the potential of innovative rehabilitative interventions such as cognitive remediation and neuromodulation, aimed at reducing relapses in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Enhancing their effectiveness requires a thorough description of the neural correlates of cognitive alterations in AUD. Past related attempts, however, were limited by the focus on selected neuro-cognitive variables. We aimed to fill this gap by combining, in 22 AUD patients and 18 controls, an extensive neuro-cognitive evaluation and metrics of intrinsic connectivity as highlighted by resting-state brain activity. We addressed an inherent property of intrinsic activity such as intra-network coherence, the temporal correlation of the slow synchronous fluctuations within resting-state networks, representing an early biomarker of alterations in the functional brain architecture underlying cognitive functioning. AUD patients displayed executive impairments involving working-memory, attention and visuomotor speed, reflecting abnormal coherence of activity and grey matter atrophy within default mode, in addition to the attentional and the executive networks. The stronger relationship between fronto-lateral coherent activity and executive performance in patients than controls highlighted possible compensatory mechanisms counterbalancing the decreased functionality of networks driving the switch from automatic to controlled behavior. These results provide novel insights into AUD patients' cognitive impairments, their neural bases, and possible targets of rehabilitative interventions.

Investigating the Clinical Profile of Suicide Attempters Who Used a Violent Suicidal Means

In our study, we aimed to explore the profile of the high-risk subgroup of suicide attempters that used a violent means compared to suicide attempters that chose a non-violent suicide means. Therefore, we recruited a sample of inpatients with recent suicide attempts in three psychiatric hospitals in Thuringia, Germany. We used a structured clinical interview to assess the psychiatric diagnoses, sociodemographic data, and characteristics of the suicide attempt. Furthermore, we used several validated clinical questionnaires to measure suicidal ideations, suicide intent, depression severity, hopelessness, impulsivity, aggression, anger expression, and childhood trauma. We compared 41 individuals using violent means to 59 using non-violent means with univariate and multivariate statistical analyses. We found significantly (corrected for multiple comparisons) higher levels of impulsivity-related sensation-seeking in violent suicide attempters in univariate and multivariate analyses, and additionally in anger expression directed inward at an uncorrected statistical threshold. Besides that, there were no significant differences between the two groups. We assume that underlying neurocognitive mechanisms, such as impaired decision-making processes and/or differences in risk/loss assessment, could explain the higher levels of questionnaire-based sensation-seeking in subjects who use violent suicide means. Further research is needed, including neuroimaging and biochemical techniques, to gain more insight into the mechanisms underlying the choice of a suicidal means.

Decision-making and risk-taking in forensic and non-forensic patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: A multicenter European study

Studies of patients with schizophrenia and offenders with severe mental disorders decision-making performance have produced mixed findings. In addition, most earlier studies have assessed decision-making skills in offenders or people with mental disorders, separately, thus neglecting the possible additional contribution of a mental disorder on choice patterns in people who offend.

This study aimed to fill this gap by comparing risk-taking in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), with and without a history of serious violent offending assessing whether, and to what extent, risk-taking represents a significant predictor of group membership, controlling for their executive skills, as well as for socio-demographic and clinical characteristics.

Overall, 115 patients with a primary diagnosis of SSD were recruited: 74 were forensic patients with a lifetime history of severe interpersonal violence and 41 were patients with SSD without such a history. No significant group differences were observed on psychopathological symptoms severity. Forensic generally displayed lower scores than non-forensic patients in all cognitive subtests of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (except for the “token motor” and the “digit sequencing” tasks) and on all the six dimensions of the Cambridge Gambling Task, except for “Deliberation time”, in which forensic scored higher than non-forensic patients. “Deliberation time” was also positively, although weakly correlated with “poor impulse control”.

Identifying those facets of impaired decision-making mostly predicting offenders' behaviour among individuals with mental disorder might inform risk assessment and be targeted in treatment and rehabilitation protocols.

Decreased sensitivity to loss of options in patients with Parkinson's disease

Humans prefer to have many options when making decisions. When there is a threat of options disappearing, humans invest more to keep these options available, indicating that they are sensitive to the loss of options. This study examined whether patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), a disease characterized by dopamine depletion, try to keep options available when options are disappearing. Twenty-seven PD patients without dementia and 27 healthy controls (HCs) performed the door game, in which participants were presented with multiple alternatives in the form of three doors, each associated with a different point distribution. The participants were asked to maximize their point earnings by finding the best door. The task included two conditions. In the shutter condition, shutters gradually closed on doors that were not chosen; once the shutters completely closed, the door was no longer available. There were no shutters in the control condition. The results revealed that the HCs switched doors more often in the shutter condition than in the control condition, indicating a tendency to keep options available. However, the PD patients did not show such differences between the two conditions. The difference in the number of switches between the shutter and control conditions in the PD patients was significantly positively correlated with the distribution of dopamine transporters in the left striatum, as measured by ¹²³I-ioflupane-SPECT (DaTSCAN) images. These results suggest that PD patients are less sensitive to the loss of options, and this decreased sensitivity may be caused by a decline in dopaminergic neurotransmission.

Altered striatal-opercular intrinsic connectivity reflects decreased aversion to losses in alcohol use disorder

The persistence of addictive behaviours despite their adverse consequences highlights decreased punishment sensitivity as a facet of decision-making impairments in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). This attitude departs from the typical loss aversion (LA) pattern, i.e. the stronger sensitivity to negative than positive outcomes, previously associated with striatal and limbic-somatosensory responsiveness in healthy individuals. Consistent evidence highlights decreased LA as a marker of disease severity in AUD, but its neural bases remain largely unexplored. AUD-specific modulations of frontolateral activity by LA were previously related to the higher executive demands of anticipating losses than gains, but the relationship between LA and executive/working-memory performance in AUD is debated. Building on previous evidence of overlapping neural bases of LA during decision-making and at rest, we investigated a possible neural signature of altered LA in AUDs, and its connections with executive skills, in terms of complementary facets of resting-state functioning. In patients, smaller LA than controls, unrelated to executive performance, reflected reduced connectivity within striatal and medial temporal networks, and altered connectivity from these regions to the insular-opercular cortex. AUD-specific loss-related modulations of intrinsic connectivity thus involved structures previously associated both with drug-seeking and with coding the trade-off between appetitive and aversive motivational drives. These findings fit the hypothesis that altered striatal coding of choice-related incentive value, and interoceptive responsiveness to prospective outcomes, enhance neural sensitivity to drug-related stimuli in addictions. LA and its neural bases might prove useful markers of AUD severity and effectiveness of rehabilitation strategies targeting the salience of negative choice outcomes.

Decision neuroscience and neuroeconomics: Recent progress and ongoing challenges

In the past decade, decision neuroscience and neuroeconomics have developed many new insights in the study of decision making. This review provides an overarching update on how the field has advanced in this time period. Although our initial review a decade ago outlined several theoretical, conceptual, methodological, empirical, and practical challenges, there has only been limited progress in resolving these challenges. We summarize significant trends in decision neuroscience through the lens of the challenges outlined for the field and review examples where the field has had significant, direct, and applicable impacts across economics and psychology. First, we review progress on topics including reward learning, explore-exploit decisions, risk and ambiguity, intertemporal choice, and valuation. Next, we assess the impacts of emotion, social rewards, and social context on decision making. Then, we follow up with how individual differences impact choices and new exciting developments in the prediction and neuroforecasting of future decisions. Finally, we consider how trends in decision-neuroscience research reflect progress toward resolving past challenges, discuss new and exciting applications of recent research, and identify new challenges for the field. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making Psychology > Emotion and Motivation.

High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex modulates decision-making and executive control

Previous neuroimaging evidence highlights the translational implications of targeting the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), i.e. a key node of the networks underlying conflict monitoring and decision-making, in brain stimulation treatments with clinical or rehabilitative purposes. While the optimized modelling of "high-definition" current flows between multiple anode-cathode pairs might, in principle, allow to stimulate an otherwise challenging target, sensitive benchmark metrics of dACC neuromodulation are required to assess the effectiveness of this approach. On this basis, we aimed to assess the modulatory effect of anodal and cathodal high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) of the dACC on different facets of executive control and decision-making in healthy young individuals. A combined modelling/targeting procedure provided the optimal montage for the maximum intensity of dACC stimulation with six small "high-definition" electrodes delivering anodal, cathodal or sham HD-tDCS for 20 min in a within-subject design with three separate sessions. Following stimulation, participants performed Flanker and gambling tasks unveiling individual differences in executive control and both loss- and risk-aversion in decision-making, respectively. Compared to both anodal and sham conditions, cathodal dACC stimulation significantly affected task performance by increasing control over the Flanker conflict effect, and both loss and risk-aversion in decision-making. By confirming the feasibility and effectiveness of dACC stimulation with HD-tDCS, these findings highlight the implications of modelling and targeting procedures for neuromodulation in clinical research, whereby innovative protocols might serve as treatment addressing dysfunctional dACC activity, or combined with cognitive training, to enhance higher-order executive functioning in different neuropsychiatric conditions.

Risk perception and behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic: Predicting variables of compliance with lockdown measures

The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to counteract it have highlighted the role of individual differences in evaluating and reacting to emergencies, and the challenges inherent in promoting precautionary behaviours. We aimed to explore the psychological and cognitive factors modulating behaviour and intentions during the national lockdown in Italy. We administered an online questionnaire (N = 244) that included tests for assessing personality traits (Temperament and Character Inventory; Locus of Control of Behaviour) and moral judgment (Moral Foundations Questionnaire), alongside behavioural economics tasks addressing different facets of risk attitude (loss aversion, risk aversion and delay discounting). We then assessed the extent to which individual variations in these dimensions modulated participants' compliance with the lockdown norms. When assessing their joint contribution via multiple regressions, lockdown adherence was mostly predicted by internal locus of control, psycho-economic dimensions suggestive of long-sighted and loss-averse attitudes, as well as personality traits related to cautionary behaviour, such as harm avoidance, and the authority moral concern. These findings show that a multi-domain assessment of the factors underlying personal intentions, and thus driving compliance with government measures, can help predict individuals' actions during health emergencies. This evidence points to factors that should be considered when developing interventions and communication strategies to promote precautionary behaviours.

Posterior fronto-medial atrophy reflects decreased loss aversion, but not executive impairment, in alcohol use disorder

Decreased punishment sensitivity in alcohol use disorder (AUD) might reflect a reduction in the typical human tendency to overweigh negative choice outcomes compared with equivalent positive ones, that is, 'loss aversion.' While this hypothesis is supported by previous reports of reduced loss aversion in AUD, it is still unknown whether such decreased sensitivity to prospective losses represents a specific facet of altered decision-making or a secondary effect of executive/working-memory impairments. We addressed this issue by assessing whether lower loss aversion in 22 AUD patients compared with 19 healthy controls is explained by their differential executive or working-memory performance and by investigating its neural basis in terms of grey matter density and cortical thickness via voxel- and surface-based morphometry, respectively. A significant decrease of loss aversion in patients, unrelated to their impaired executive/working-memory performance, reflected the reduction of posterior fronto-medial grey matter density and right frontopolar cortical thickness. Rather than their executive deficits, patients' reduced loss aversion reflects the structural damage of the posterior fronto-medial cortex previously associated with solving conflicts at the response level, where earlier functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown a 'neural loss aversion' pattern of steeper deactivation for losses than activation for gains, and of the frontopolar cortex in charge of managing competing goals. These findings highlight possible directions for addressing AUD patients' high relapse rate, for example, cognitive-behavioural rehabilitative interventions enhancing the awareness of the adverse outcomes of addiction or neurostimulation protocols targeting the regions processing their salience.

Emotional stress & decision-making: an emotional stressor significantly reduces loss aversion

Stress influences loss aversion, the principle that losses loom larger than gains, although the nature of this relationship is unclear. Studies show that stress reduces loss aversion; however, stress response has been only studied by means of physiological measures, but the stressor emotional impact remained unclear. Since emotions can modify stress response and increase the activity of the loss aversion neural substrates, it could be expected that an emotional stressor may produce the opposite effect, i.e. loss aversion increase. 69 participants were divided into experimental and control group. The first one was exposed to emotional stress through a 5-minutes video, and control group viewed a match-length distractor video. Physiological stress response was assessed by means of electrodermal activity (EDA), and both perceived stress, and negative affect (i.e. psychological stress response) were registered through questionnaires. Both groups performed a mixed gamble task, which allowed the extraction of loss aversion through a Bayesian-computational model. During and after video, experimental group had higher electrodermal activity, perceived stress, and negative affect than controls, suggesting that emotional stress induction was effective. However, rather than increasing, loss aversion of stressed participants was lower. These results constitute a new evidence of emotional stress influencing loss aversion and highlight that stress, regardless of its emotional impact, can reduce this phenomenon. These results should be considered when predicting risky decisions.

Increased decision latency in alcohol use disorder reflects altered resting-state synchrony in the anterior salience network

Increased decision latency in alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been generally explained in terms of psychomotor slowing. Recent results suggest that AUD patients' slowed decision-making might rather reflect alterations in the neural circuitry underlying the engagement of controlled processing by salient stimuli. We addressed this hypothesis by testing a relationship between decision latency at the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT) and intrinsic brain activity in 22 individuals with AUD and 19 matched controls. CGT deliberation time was related to two complementary facets of resting-state fMRI activity, i.e. coherence and intensity, representing early biomarkers of functional changes in the intrinsic brain architecture. For both metrics, we assessed a multiple regression (to test a relationship with deliberation time in the whole sample), and an interaction analysis (to test a significantly different relationship with decision latency across groups). AUD patients' slowed deliberation time (p < 0.025) reflected distinct facets of altered intrinsic activity in the cingulate node of the anterior salience network previously associated with the "output" motor stage of response selection. Its heightened activity in AUD patients compared with controls, tracking choice latency (p < 0.025 corrected), might represent a compensation mechanism counterbalancing the concurrent decrease of its internal coherent activity (p < 0.025 corrected). These findings provide novel insights into the intrinsic neural mechanisms underlying increased decision latency in AUD, involving decreased temporal synchronicity in networks promoting executive control by behaviourally relevant stimuli. These results pave the way to further studies assessing more subtle facets of decision-making in AUD, and their possible changes with rehabilitative treatment.

Effect of uncertainty-dependent residential mobility on loss aversion

The current research aimed to examine the relationship between residential mobility and loss aversion, a ubiquitous decision-making bias conceptualized in prospect theory. Combining correlational, experimental, and electroencephalography approaches, we tested the hypothesis that residential mobility may increase loss aversion. The results revealed a positive correlation between residential mobility and loss aversion (Study 1). These effects were moderated by individuals' residential mobility/stability mindsets. Behaviorally, we observed a positive association between residential mobility history and loss aversion among individuals with a high (vs. low) subjective uncertainty after manipulating their residential mobility mindset by priming them with a mobile or stable lifestyle (Study 2). On the neural level, we found that the mindset of residential mobility (vs. stability) enhanced the differential feedback-related negativity (FRN) modulations between the large-win and large-loss conditions among Chinese participants with a high subjective uncertainty (Study 3). In conclusion, residential mobility elevated loss aversion by enhancing feelings of subjective uncertainty. Our findings provide novel insights into how changes in the socioecological environment shape individuals' decision-making bias.

Arbitration between insula and temporoparietal junction subserves framing-induced boosts in generosity during social discounting

Generosity toward others declines across the perceived social distance to them. Here, participants chose between selfish and costly generous options in two conditions: in the gain frame, a generous choice yielded a gain to the other; in the loss frame, it entailed preventing the loss of a previous endowment to the other. Social discounting was reduced in the loss compared to the gain frame, implying increased generosity toward strangers. Using neuroimaging tools, we found that while activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) was associated with generosity in the gain frame, the insular cortex was selectively recruited during generous choices in the loss frame. We provide support for a network-model according to which TPJ and insula differentially subserve generosity by modulating value signals in the VMPFC in a frame-dependent fashion. These results extend our understanding of the insula role in nudging prosocial behavior in humans.

Heart rate variability after vigorous physical exercise is positively related to loss aversion

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES OF THE ARTICLE

Loss aversion bias, whereby losses loom larger than gains, can be reduced by stress. At the same time, vigorous physical exercise is a powerful neuroendocrine stressor and heart rate variability (HRV) provides an objective measure of the actual exercise impact, relative to each individual physical condition. Our aim was to study whether vigorous exercise can influence loss aversion, considering HRV in this relation. We hypothesized that the lower HRV derived from vigorous exercise (i.e., when stressor produced the most impact) would predict a lower loss aversion.

METHODS

Two groups (Experimental, N = 37; Control, N = 39) completed a loss aversion task, but the experimental group was exposed to an acute physical stressor before.

RESULTS

Results revealed a significant group x HRV interaction. In the control group, HRV was not associated with loss aversion. Conversely, as hypothesized, the lower HRV levels derived from exercise were associated with a lesser loss aversion in the experimental group.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest that physiological changes from physical exercise could affect decision-making by reducing loss aversion.

Fronto-temporal brain activity and connectivity track implicit attention to positive and negative social words in a novel socio-emotional Stroop task

Previous inconsistencies on the effects of implicitly processing positively - vs. negatively - connotated emotional words might reflect the influence of uncontrolled psycholinguistic dimensions, and/or social facets inherent in putative "emotional" stimuli. Based on the relevance of social features in semantic cognition, we developed a socio-emotional Stroop task to assess the influence of social vs. individual (non-social) emotional content, besides negative vs. positive valence, on implicit word processing. The effect of these variables was evaluated in terms of performance and RTs, alongside associated brain activity/connectivity. We matched conditions for several psycholinguistic variables, and assessed a modulation of brain activity/connectivity by trial-wise RT, to characterize the maximum of condition- and subject-specific variability. RTs were tracked by insular and anterior cingulate activations likely reflecting implicit attention to stimuli, interfering with task-performance based on condition-specific processing of their subjective salience. Slower performance for negative than neutral/positive words was tracked by left-hemispheric structures processing negative stimuli and emotions, such as fronto-insular cortex, while the lack of specific activations for positively-connotated words supported their marginal facilitatory effect. The speeding/slowing effects of processing positive/negative individual emotional stimuli were enhanced by social words, reflecting in specific activations of the right anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortex, respectively. RTs to social positive and negative words modulated connectivity from these regions to fronto-striatal and sensorimotor structures, respectively, likely promoting approach vs. avoidance dispositions shaping their facilitatory vs. inhibitory effect. These results might help assessing the neural correlates of impaired social cognition and emotional regulation, and the effects of rehabilitative interventions.

Psychological mechanisms of loss aversion: A drift-diffusion decomposition

Decision makers often reject mixed gambles offering equal probabilities of a larger gain and a smaller loss. This important phenomenon, referred to as loss aversion, is typically explained by prospect theory, which proposes that decision makers give losses higher utility weights than gains. In this paper we consider alternative psychological mechanisms capable of explaining loss aversion, such as a fixed utility bias favoring rejection, as well as a bias favoring rejection prior to gamble valuation. We use a drift diffusion model of decision making to conceptually distinguish, formally define, and empirically measure these mechanisms. In two preregistered experiments, we show that the pre-valuation bias provides a very large contribution to model fits, predicts key response time patterns, reflects prior expectations regarding gamble desirability, and can be manipulated independently of the valuation process. Our results indicate that loss aversion is the result of multiple different psychological mechanisms, and that the pre-valuation bias is a fundamental determinant of this well-known behavioral tendency. These results have important implications for how we model behavior in risky choice tasks, and how we interpret its relationship with various psychological, clinical, and neurobiological variables.

Expected value and sensitivity to punishment modulate insular cortex activity during risky decision making

The exact contribution of the insula to risky decision making remains unclear, as are the specific outcome parameters and inter-individual characteristics that modulate insular activity prior to a risky choice. This fMRI study examines the contributions of outcome valence, magnitude, probability, and expected value (EV) to insular activity during risky decision making, and explores the influence of sensitivity to reward and to punishment, and anxiety, to insular activity. Participants (N = 31) performed a gambling task requiring choice between two roulettes with different outcome magnitude, probability and EV, under gain and loss conditions separately, and filled questionnaires assessing sensitivity to punishment/reward, and state/trait anxiety. Parametric analyses were conducted to examine the modulation of brain activity during decision making in relation to each task parameter. Correlations were examined between insular activity and psychometric questionnaires. EV of the selected roulette was associated with right posterior insula activation during decision making. Higher sensitivity to punishment was associated with lower bilateral insular activation. These findings suggest that the right posterior insula is involved in tracking the EV of a risky option during decision making. The involvement of the insula when making risky decisions also appears to be influenced by inter-individual differences in sensitivity to punishment.

Older adults show a reduced tendency to engage in context-dependent decision biases

When we make decisions, we usually consider the context. This can sometimes lead to suboptimal choices or choice abnormalities. One such abnormality is the compromise effect, according to which deciders tend to favour options positioned as a compromise in an available set of extreme options. Theoretical accounts consider that these effects relate to available cognitive resources, which, in turn, have been found to depend on an individual's dopaminergic innervation. Referring to a correlative triad between cognition, dopamine and aging, the present study demonstrates that the compromise effect is replicable in a group of younger adults (n = 27, 20-32 years of age) yet is attenuated in older adults (n = 27, 62-80 years of age). Results from an [¹⁸F]-FDOPA-PET analysis in older adults indicate a positive association between older adults' inclination to engage in compromise effects and their striatal dopamine synthesis capacity. These results demonstrate altered context-dependent decision biases in older adults and suggest a neuromodulatory mechanism underlying this irregular choice.

Abnormal fronto-striatal intrinsic connectivity reflects executive dysfunction in alcohol use disorders

The neural bases of cognitive impairment(s) in alcohol use disorders (AUDs) have been explained either with the specific involvement of frontal regions mostly affected by alcohol neurotoxic effects, or with a global brain damage underlying different neuro-cognitive alterations. Novel insights into this issue might come from the analysis of resting-state brain activity, representing a baseline level of intrinsic connectivity within and between the networks underlying cognitive performance. We thus addressed the neural bases of cognitive impairment(s) in 22 AUD patients, compared with 18 healthy controls, by coupling resting-state fMRI with an in-depth neuropsychological assessment of the main cognitive domains. We assessed a relationship between AUD patients' cognitive impairment and two complementary facets of intrinsic brain functioning, i.e., intensity of activation and functional network connectivity, related to the strength of connectivity within and between resting-state networks, respectively. Alcoholic patients' decreased cognitive performance involved specifically an executive domain associated with attentional and working-memory tasks. This impairment reflected an abnormal relationship, in patients versus controls, between cognitive performance and the intensity of intrinsic activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal and striatal nodes of the executive control network. Functional connectivity between the same structures was positively correlated with executive performance in the whole sample, but significantly reduced in patients. The present data suggest that AUD patients' executive impairment reflects dysfunctional connectivity between the cortical and subcortical nodes of the networks underlying cognitive control on goal-directed behavior. This evidence provides a baseline for future studies addressing the abnormal neural architecture underlying cognitive impairment in AUDs and the outcome of rehabilitative treatment.

The Psychological and Neural Basis of Loss Aversion

Loss aversion is a central element of prospect theory, the dominant theory of decision making under uncertainty for the past four decades, and refers to the overweighting of potential losses relative to equivalent gains, a critical determinant of risky decision making. Recent advances in affective and decision neuroscience have shed new light on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underlying loss aversion. Here, integrating disparate literatures from the level of neurotransmitters to subjective reports of emotion, we propose a novel neural and computational framework that links norepinephrine to loss aversion and identifies a distinct role for dopamine in risk taking for rewards. We also propose that loss aversion specifically relates to anticipated emotions and aspects of the immediate experience of realized gains and losses but not their long-term emotional consequences, highlighting an underappreciated temporal structure. Finally, we discuss challenges to loss aversion and the relevance of loss aversion to understanding psychiatric disorders. Refining models of loss aversion will have broad consequences for the science of decision making and for how we understand individual variation in economic preferences and psychological well-being across both healthy and psychiatric populations.

Social Cognition through the Lens of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience

Social cognition refers to a set of processes, ranging from perception to decision-making, underlying the ability to decode others' intentions and behaviors to plan actions fitting with social and moral, besides individual and economic considerations. Its centrality in everyday life reflects the neural complexity of social processing and the ubiquity of social cognitive deficits in different pathological conditions. Social cognitive processes can be clustered in three domains associated with (a) perceptual processing of social information such as faces and emotional expressions (social perception), (b) grasping others' cognitive or affective states (social understanding), and (c) planning behaviors taking into consideration others', in addition to one's own, goals (social decision-making). We review these domains from the lens of cognitive neuroscience, i.e., in terms of the brain areas mediating the role of such processes in the ability to make sense of others' behavior and plan socially appropriate actions. The increasing evidence on the “social brain” obtained from healthy young individuals nowadays constitutes the baseline for detecting changes in social cognitive skills associated with physiological aging or pathological conditions. In the latter case, impairments in one or more of the abovementioned domains represent a prominent concern, or even a core facet, of neurological (e.g., acquired brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases), psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia), and developmental (e.g., autism) disorders. To pave the way for the other papers of this issue, addressing the social cognitive deficits associated with severe acquired brain injury, we will briefly discuss the available evidence on the status of social cognition in normal aging and its breakdown in neurodegenerative disorders. Although the assessment and treatment of such impairments is a relatively novel sector in neurorehabilitation, the evidence summarized here strongly suggests that the development of remediation procedures for social cognitive skills will represent a future field of translational research in clinical neuroscience.

Sleep apnea: Altered brain connectivity underlying a working-memory challenge

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by the frequent presence of neuro-cognitive impairment. Recent studies associate cognitive dysfunction with altered resting-state brain connectivity between key nodes of the executive and default-mode networks, two anti-correlated functional networks whose strength of activation increases or decreases with cognitive activity, respectively. To date no study has investigated a relationship between cognitive impairment in OSA and brain connectivity during an active working-memory challenge. We thus investigated the effect of OSA on working-memory performance and underlying brain connectivity.

OSA patients and matched healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning while performing a 2-back working-memory task. Standard fMRI analyses highlighted the brain regions activated at increasing levels of working-memory load, which were used as seeds in connectivity analyses. The latter were based on a multiregional Psycho-Physiological-Interaction (PPI) approach, to unveil group differences in effective connectivity underlying working-memory performance.

Compared with controls, in OSA patients normal working-memory performance reflected in: a) reduced interhemispheric effective connectivity between the frontal “executive” nodes of the working-memory network, and b) increased right-hemispheric connectivity among regions mediating the “salience-based” switch from the default resting-state mode to the effortful cognitive activity associated with the executive network. The strength of such connections was correlated, at increasing task-demands, with executive (Stroop test) and memory (Digit Span test) performance in neuro-cognitive evaluations.

The analysis of effective connectivity changes during a working-memory challenge provides a complementary window, compared with resting-state studies, on the mechanisms supporting preserved performance despite functional and structural brain modifications in OSA.

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Sleep apnea (OSA) is frequently characterized by neuro-cognitive impairment.

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We addressed brain connectivity underlying working-memory (WM) in OSA.

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Normal WM reflected in reduced interhemispheric connectivity in the executive network.

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Normal WM reflected in increased connectivity between salience and default networks.

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Brain connectivity highlights compensatory mechanisms supporting performance in OSA.

Neural correlates of economic value and valuation context: an event-related potential study

The value of environmental cues and internal states is continuously evaluated by the human brain, and it is this subjective value that largely guides decision making. The present study aimed to investigate the initial value attribution process, specifically the spatiotemporal activation patterns associated with values and valuation context, using electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a stimulus rating task in which everyday household items marketed up to a price of £4 were evaluated with respect to their desirability or material properties. The subjective values of items were evaluated as willingness to pay (WTP) in a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction. On the basis of the individual's subjective WTP values, the stimuli were divided into high- and low-value items. Source dipole modeling was applied to estimate the cortical sources underlying ERP components modulated by subjective values (high vs. low WTP) and the evaluation condition (value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments). Low-WTP items and value-relevant judgments both led to a more pronounced N2 visual evoked potential at right frontal scalp electrodes. Source activity in right anterior insula and left orbitofrontal cortex was larger for low vs. high WTP at ∼200 ms. At a similar latency, source activity in right anterior insula and right parahippocampal gyrus was larger for value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments. A stronger response for low- than high-value items in anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex appears to reflect aversion to low-valued item acquisition, which in an auction experiment would be perceived as a relative loss. This initial low-value bias occurs automatically irrespective of the valuation context. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We demonstrate the spatiotemporal characteristics of the brain valuation process using event-related potentials and willingness to pay as a measure of subjective value. The N2 component resolves values of objects with a bias toward low-value items. The value-related changes of the N2 component are part of an automatic valuation process.

The alcoholic brain: neural bases of impaired reward-based decision-making in alcohol use disorders

Neuroeconomics is providing insights into the neural bases of decision-making in normal and pathological conditions. In the neuropsychiatric domain, this discipline investigates how abnormal functioning of neural systems associated with reward processing and cognitive control promotes different disorders, and whether such evidence may inform treatments. This endeavor is crucial when studying different types of addiction, which share a core promoting mechanism in the imbalance between impulsive subcortical neural signals associated with immediate pleasurable outcomes and inhibitory signals mediated by a prefrontal reflective system. The resulting impairment in behavioral control represents a hallmark of alcohol use disorders (AUDs), a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by excessive alcohol consumption despite devastating consequences. This review aims to summarize available magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) evidence on reward-related decision-making alterations in AUDs, and to envision possible future research directions. We review functional MRI (fMRI) studies using tasks involving monetary rewards, as well as MRI studies relating decision-making parameters to neurostructural gray- or white-matter metrics. The available data suggest that excessive alcohol exposure affects neural signaling within brain networks underlying adaptive behavioral learning via the implementation of prediction errors. Namely, weaker ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity and altered connectivity between ventral striatum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex likely underpin a shift from goal-directed to habitual actions which, in turn, might underpin compulsive alcohol consumption and relapsing episodes despite adverse consequences. Overall, these data highlight abnormal fronto-striatal connectivity as a candidate neurobiological marker of impaired choice in AUDs. Further studies are needed, however, to unveil its implications in the multiple facets of decision-making.

Deciding for Future Selves Reduces Loss Aversion

In this paper, we present an incentivized experiment to investigate the degree of loss aversion when people make decisions for their current selves and future selves under risk. We find that when participants make decisions for their future selves, they are less loss averse compared to when they make decisions for their current selves. This finding is consistent with the interpretation of loss aversion as a bias in decision-making driven by emotions, which are reduced when making decisions for future selves. Our findings endorsed the external validity of previous studies on the impact of emotion on loss aversion in a real world decision-making environment.