Tuning the Brake While Raising the Stake: Network Dynamics during Sequential Decision-Making

TY - JOUR

T1 - Tuning the Brake While Raising the Stake

T2 - Network Dynamics during Sequential Decision-Making

AU - Meder, David

AU - Haagensen, Brian Numelin

AU - Hulme, Oliver

AU - Morville, Tobias

AU - Gelskov, Sofie

AU - Herz, Damian Marc

AU - Diomsina, Beata

AU - Christensen, Mark Schram

AU - Madsen, Kristoffer Hougaard

AU - Siebner, Hartwig Roman

N1 - Copyright © 2016 Meder, Haagensen, et al.

PY - 2016/5/11

Y1 - 2016/5/11

N2 - When gathering valued goods, risk and reward are often coupled and escalate over time, for instance, during foraging, trading, or gambling. This escalating frame requires agents to continuously balance expectations of reward against those of risk. To address how the human brain dynamically computes these tradeoffs, we performed whole-brain fMRI while healthy young individuals engaged in a sequential gambling task. Participants were repeatedly confronted with the option to continue with throwing a die to accumulate monetary reward under escalating risk, or the alternative option to stop to bank the current balance. Within each gambling round, the accumulation of gains gradually increased reaction times for “continue” choices, indicating growing uncertainty in the decision to continue. Neural activity evoked by “continue” choices was associated with growing activity and connectivity of a cortico-subcortical “braking” network that positively scaled with the accumulated gains, including pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), inferior frontal gyrus, caudate, and subthalamic nucleus (STN). The influence of the STN on continue-evoked activity in the pre-SMA was predicted by interindividual differences in risk-aversion attitudes expressed during the gambling task. Furthermore, activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) reflected individual choice tendencies by showing increased activation when subjects made nondefault “continue” choices despite an increasing tendency to stop, but ACC activity did not change in proportion with subjective choice uncertainty. Together, the results implicate a key role of dorsal ACC, pre-SMA, inferior frontal gyrus, and STN in computing the trade-off between escalating reward and risk in sequential decision-making.

AB - When gathering valued goods, risk and reward are often coupled and escalate over time, for instance, during foraging, trading, or gambling. This escalating frame requires agents to continuously balance expectations of reward against those of risk. To address how the human brain dynamically computes these tradeoffs, we performed whole-brain fMRI while healthy young individuals engaged in a sequential gambling task. Participants were repeatedly confronted with the option to continue with throwing a die to accumulate monetary reward under escalating risk, or the alternative option to stop to bank the current balance. Within each gambling round, the accumulation of gains gradually increased reaction times for “continue” choices, indicating growing uncertainty in the decision to continue. Neural activity evoked by “continue” choices was associated with growing activity and connectivity of a cortico-subcortical “braking” network that positively scaled with the accumulated gains, including pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), inferior frontal gyrus, caudate, and subthalamic nucleus (STN). The influence of the STN on continue-evoked activity in the pre-SMA was predicted by interindividual differences in risk-aversion attitudes expressed during the gambling task. Furthermore, activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) reflected individual choice tendencies by showing increased activation when subjects made nondefault “continue” choices despite an increasing tendency to stop, but ACC activity did not change in proportion with subjective choice uncertainty. Together, the results implicate a key role of dorsal ACC, pre-SMA, inferior frontal gyrus, and STN in computing the trade-off between escalating reward and risk in sequential decision-making.

U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3191-15.2016

DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3191-15.2016

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 27170137

SN - 0270-6474

VL - 36

SP - 5417

EP - 5426

JO - The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience

JF - The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience

IS - 19

ER -