Striatal topography of probability and magnitude information for decisions under uncertainty

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Gregory Berns, Emory University; Emily Bell, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2012-02-15
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2011 Elsevier Inc.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.008
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: NeuroImage
• ISSN: 1053-8119
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 4
• Start Page: 3166
• End Page: 3172
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA024045) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
• Keywords: Models, Theoretical; Female; Humans; Adult; Decision Making; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Basal Ganglia; Male; Adolescent; Uncertainty; Young Adult; Middle Aged
• Research Categories: Psychology, Personality; Psychology, Social

Abstract

Most decisions involve some element of uncertainty. When the outcomes of these decisions have different likelihoods of occurrence, the decision-maker must consider both the magnitude of each outcome and the probability of its occurrence, but how do individual decision makers combine the two dimensions of magnitude and probability? Here, we approach the problem by separating in time the presentation of magnitude and probability information, and focus the analysis of fMRI activations on the first piece of information only. Thus, we are able to identify distinct neural circuits for the two dimensions without the confounding effect of divided attention or the cognitive operation of combining them. We find that magnitude information correlates with the size of the response of the ventral striatum while probability information correlates with the response in the dorsal striatum. The relative responsiveness of these two striatal regions correlates with the behavioral tendency to weight one more than the other. The results are consistent with a second-order process of information aggregation in which individuals make separate judgments for magnitude and probability and then integrate those judgments.