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Articles, Behavioral/Cognitive

Neural Correlates of Expected Risks and Returns in Risky Choice across Development

Anna C.K. van Duijvenvoorde, Hilde M. Huizenga, Leah H. Somerville, Mauricio R. Delgado, Alisa Powers, Wouter D. Weeda, B.J. Casey, Elke U. Weber and Bernd Figner
Journal of Neuroscience 28 January 2015, 35 (4) 1549-1560; https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1924-14.2015
Anna C.K. van Duijvenvoorde
1University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, 1018 XA Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
2Leiden University, Department of Psychology; Brain & Development Lab, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands,
3Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands,
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Hilde M. Huizenga
1University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, 1018 XA Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
4Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center, 1018 XA Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
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Leah H. Somerville
5Harvard University, Department of Psychology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02143,
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Mauricio R. Delgado
6Rutgers University, Department of Psychology, Newark, New Jersey 07102,
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Alisa Powers
7Weill Cornell Medical College–Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, New York, New York 10021,
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Wouter D. Weeda
8VU University Amsterdam, Department of Clinical Neuropsychology, 1183 AV Amsterdam, The Netherlands,
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B.J. Casey
7Weill Cornell Medical College–Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, New York, New York 10021,
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Elke U. Weber
9Columbia University, Center for the Decision Sciences, New York, New York 10027,
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Bernd Figner
10Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute and Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Adolescence is often described as a period of increased risk taking relative to both childhood and adulthood. This inflection in risky choice behavior has been attributed to a neurobiological imbalance between earlier developing motivational systems and later developing top-down control regions. Yet few studies have decomposed risky choice to investigate the underlying mechanisms or tracked their differential developmental trajectory. The current study uses a risk–return decomposition to more precisely assess the development of processes underlying risky choice and to link them more directly to specific neural mechanisms. This decomposition specifies the influence of changing risks (outcome variability) and changing returns (expected value) on the choices of children, adolescents, and adults in a dynamic risky choice task, the Columbia Card Task. Behaviorally, risk aversion increased across age groups, with adults uniformly risk averse and adolescents showing substantial individual differences in risk sensitivity, ranging from risk seeking to risk averse. Neurally, we observed an adolescent peak in risk-related activation in the anterior insula and dorsal medial PFC. Return sensitivity, on the other hand, increased monotonically across age groups and was associated with increased activation in the ventral medial PFC and posterior cingulate cortex with age. Our results implicate adolescence as a developmental phase of increased neural risk sensitivity. Importantly, this work shows that using a behaviorally validated decision-making framework allows a precise operationalization of key constructs underlying risky choice that inform the interpretation of results.

  • Columbia Card Task
  • decision making
  • expected value
  • insula
  • medial prefrontal cortex
  • variance
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The Journal of Neuroscience: 35 (4)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 35, Issue 4
28 Jan 2015
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Neural Correlates of Expected Risks and Returns in Risky Choice across Development
Anna C.K. van Duijvenvoorde, Hilde M. Huizenga, Leah H. Somerville, Mauricio R. Delgado, Alisa Powers, Wouter D. Weeda, B.J. Casey, Elke U. Weber, Bernd Figner
Journal of Neuroscience 28 January 2015, 35 (4) 1549-1560; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1924-14.2015

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Neural Correlates of Expected Risks and Returns in Risky Choice across Development
Anna C.K. van Duijvenvoorde, Hilde M. Huizenga, Leah H. Somerville, Mauricio R. Delgado, Alisa Powers, Wouter D. Weeda, B.J. Casey, Elke U. Weber, Bernd Figner
Journal of Neuroscience 28 January 2015, 35 (4) 1549-1560; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1924-14.2015
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Keywords

  • Columbia Card Task
  • decision making
  • expected value
  • insula
  • medial prefrontal cortex
  • variance

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