Agency modulates the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex responses in belief-based decision making

Learning Process During Risk Detection in Adolescents With ADHD

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate and describe the performance during the learning process of risk-detection versus risk-benefit processing in adolescents diagnosed with ADHD.

METHOD

Thirty-five adolescents with ADHD and 26 paired controls participated. The tests applied are Iowa-type children version paradigm and Stroop test.

RESULTS

Adolescents with ADHD exhibited lower risk-benefit processing capacity and lower ability to detect risk selections; main findings also indicate that adolescents with ADHD were slower to learn to avoid risk choices. In addition, they also presented a deficient inhibitory control.

CONCLUSION

Results confirm the presence of a deficit in advantageous choice in adolescents with ADHD. By providing a measure of risk choice-and not only a net score-we show that adolescents with ADHD also fail to avoid risk choices. This deficit is mainly because they are slower in learning how to avoid risk choices, and not simply deficient. Literature is scarce concerning studies with Iowa-type paradigms in samples intregated exclusively by adolescents. More research is needed to clarify the nature of these deficiencies.

Amplified Striatal Responses to Near-Miss Outcomes in Pathological Gamblers

Near-misses in gambling games are losing events that come close to a win. Near-misses were previously shown to recruit reward-related brain regions including the ventral striatum, and to invigorate gambling behavior, supposedly by fostering an illusion of control. Given that pathological gamblers are particularly vulnerable to such cognitive illusions, their persistent gambling behavior might result from an amplified striatal sensitivity to near-misses. In addition, animal studies have shown that behavioral responses to near-miss-like events are sensitive to dopamine, but this dopaminergic influence has not been tested in humans. To investigate these hypotheses, we recruited 22 pathological gamblers and 22 healthy controls who played a slot machine task delivering wins, near-misses and full-misses, inside an fMRI scanner. Each participant played the task twice, once under placebo and once under a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist (sulpiride 400 mg), in a double-blind, counter-balanced design. Participants were asked about their motivation to continue gambling throughout the task. Across all participants, near-misses elicited higher motivation to continue gambling and increased striatal responses compared with full-misses. Crucially, pathological gamblers showed amplified striatal responses to near-misses compared with controls. These group differences were not observed following win outcomes. In contrast to our hypothesis, sulpiride did not induce any reliable modulation of brain responses to near-misses. Together, our results demonstrate that pathological gamblers have amplified brain responses to near-misses, which likely contribute to their persistent gambling behavior. However, there is no evidence that these responses are influenced by dopamine. These results have implications for treatment and gambling regulation.

Choose to move: The motivational impact of autonomy support on motor learning

Numerous studies in the motor learning domain have demonstrated learning advantages of self-controlled practice relative to yoked conditions. In separate lines of evidence in the social-psychological literature, findings show that providing participants with task-relevant autonomy support or minor incidental choices can result in superior outcomes when compared with conditions that thwart autonomy or do not offer choice. We hypothesized that motor learning could be enhanced by providing learners with choices - even if those choices are unrelated to task performance. In Experiment 1, two groups of participants practiced a golf putting task. While one group (the choice group) was able to select the color of golf balls (white, yellow, or orange) to be used in each upcoming block of 10 trials, participants in the second group (the yoked group) were provided with the same colored golf balls their choice-group counterparts had chosen. The results of a 24-h delayed retention test indicated significantly greater putting accuracy for the choice compared with the yoked group. Experiment 2 went one step further by asking choice group participants for their preferences regarding two issues unrelated to the practice task (balancing on a stabilometer): (1) which of two subsequent tasks (coincident timing or hand dynamometry) they wanted to perform and (2) which of two prints of paintings by Renoir they thought the investigator should hang on the laboratory wall. Yoked group participants were simply informed about which task they would perform afterwards and of which painting the experimenter would put on the wall. Balance learning was significantly more effective in the choice group on a retention test. Thus, self-controlled practice conditions can influence motor learning without providing task-relevant information, content, or strategic learning advantages. Self-controlled effects in motor learning may be motivational in nature, attributable to satisfaction of fundamental autonomy needs.

The interaction of perceived control and Gambler's fallacy in risky decision making: An fMRI study

Limited recent evidence implicates the anterior/posterior cingulate (ACC/PCC) and lateral prefrontal networks as the neural substrates of risky decision-making biases such as illusions of control (IoC) and gambler's fallacy (GF). However, investigation is lacking on the dynamic interactive effect of those biases during decision making. Employing a card-guessing game that independently manipulates trial-by-trial perceived control and gamble outcome among 29 healthy female participants, we observed both IoC- and GF-type behaviors, as well as an interactive effect of previous control and previous outcome, with GF-type behaviors only following computer-selected, but not self-selected, outcomes. Imaging results implicated the ACC and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in agency processing, and the cerebellum and right DLPFC in previous outcome processing, in accordance with past literature. Critically, the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) exhibited significant betting-related activities to the interaction of previous control and previous outcome, showing more positive signals to previous computer-selected winning versus losing outcomes but the reverse pattern following self-selected outcomes, as well as responding to the interactive effect of control and outcome during feedback. Associations were also found between participants' behavioral sensitivity to the interactive effect of previous control and previous outcome, and right IPL signals, as well as its functional connectivity with neural networks implicated in agency and previous outcome processing. We propose that the right IPL provides the neural substrate for the interaction of perceived control and GF, through coordinating activities in the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices and working conjunctively with lateral PFC and other parietal networks.

The Role of the Frontal and Parietal Cortex in Proactive and Reactive Inhibitory Control: A Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Study

Mounting evidence suggests that response inhibition involves both proactive and reactive inhibitory control, yet its underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. In particular, the roles of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobe (IPL) in proactive and reactive inhibitory control are still under debate. This study aimed at examining the causal role of the right IFG and IPL in proactive and reactive inhibitory control, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and the stop signal task. Twenty-two participants completed three sessions of the stop signal task, under anodal tDCS in the right IFG, the right IPL, or the primary visual cortex (VC; 1.5 mA for 15 min), respectively. The VC stimulation served as the active control condition. The tDCS effect for each condition was calculated as the difference between pre- and post-tDCS performance. Proactive control was indexed by the RT increase for go trials (or preparatory cost), and reactive control by the stop signal RT. Compared to the VC stimulation, anodal stimulation of the right IFG, but not that of the IPL, facilitated both proactive and reactive control. However, the facilitation of reactive control was not mediated by the facilitation of proactive control. Furthermore, tDCS did not affect the intraindividual variability in go RT. These results suggest a causal role of the right IFG, but not the right IPL, in both reactive and proactive inhibitory control.

Deciding How To Decide: Self-Control and Meta-Decision Making

Many different situations related to self control involve competition between two routes to decisions: default and frugal versus more resource-intensive. Examples include habits versus deliberative decisions, fatigue versus cognitive effort, and Pavlovian versus instrumental decision making. We propose that these situations are linked by a strikingly similar core dilemma, pitting the opportunity costs of monopolizing shared resources such as executive functions for some time, against the possibility of obtaining a better outcome. We offer a unifying normative perspective on this underlying rational meta-optimization, review how this may tie together recent advances in many separate areas, and connect several independent models. Finally, we suggest that the crucial mechanisms and meta-decision variables may be shared across domains.

Pathological choice: the neuroscience of gambling and gambling addiction

Gambling is pertinent to neuroscience research for at least two reasons. First, gambling is a naturalistic and pervasive example of risky decision making, and thus gambling games can provide a paradigm for the investigation of human choice behavior and "irrationality." Second, excessive gambling involvement (i.e., pathological gambling) is currently conceptualized as a behavioral addiction, and research on this condition may provide insights into addictive mechanisms in the absence of exogenous drug effects. This article is a summary of topics covered in a Society for Neuroscience minisymposium, focusing on recent advances in understanding the neural basis of gambling behavior, including translational findings in rodents and nonhuman primates, which have begun to delineate neural circuitry and neurochemistry involved.