Anterior cingulate activity modulates nonlinear decision weight function of uncertain prospects.

Prospect theory developed by Kahneman and Tversky has been among the most influential psychological models and explains many nonnormative decision-making phenomena, e.g. why people play the lottery or bet on long-shots.

Affective ambiguity for a group recruits ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Affective appraisal often involves processing complex and ambiguous stimuli, such as the mood of a group people. However, affective neuroimaging research often uses individual faces as stimuli when exploring the neural circuitry involved in social appraisal. Results from studies using single face paradigms may not generalize to settings where multiple faces are simultaneously processed.

Neurobiology of decision making: a selective review from a neurocognitive and clinical perspective.

We present a temporal map of key processes that occur during decision making, which consists of three stages: 1) formation of preferences among options, 2) selection and execution of an action, and 3) experience or evaluation of an outcome. This framework can be used to integrate findings of traditional choice psychology, neuropsychology, brain lesion studies, and functional neuroimaging. Decision making is distributed across various brain centers, which are differentially active across these stages of decision making.

The role of the striatum in implicit learning: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Previous research has posited striatal involvement in implicit learning. However, imaging studies have not directly compared learners with non-learners. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with 15 study participants, we used an implicit learning task previously associated with striatal recruitment.

Examining personality and alcohol expectancies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with adolescents.

Objective: Personality and alcohol expectancies have been examined as risk factors for the initiation and maintenance of alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. Differences in processing appetitive stimuli are seen as a mechanism for personality's influence on behavior, and that mechanism predisposes individuals to form more positive expectancies for alcohol. The go/no-go task has been used to show how personality differences influence responding to appetitive stimuli in adolescents and adults, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to examine the relation of go/no-go responding to personality in adult males.

Left inferior prefrontal cortex activation during a semantic decision-making task predicts the degree of semantic organization.

Semantic organization, an aspect of semantic processing, requires a pre-existing network of semantic knowledge that relies on a widely distributed neural network. The inferior prefrontal cortex (IPFC) has been identified as a vital structure for processing competing semantic information when making a decision about the meaning of a stimulus. However, the precise role of the IPFC in maintaining or creating a consistent semantic organizational structure is unclear.

Neural activation patterns of methamphetamine-dependent subjects during decision making predict relapse.

Context: Relapse is a common clinical problem in individuals with substance dependence. Previous studies have implicated a multifactorial process underlying relapse; however, the contribution of specific neural substrates has not yet been examined.

Objective: To determine whether results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shortly after drug cessation could predict relapse in stimulant-dependent individuals.

MDMA affects both error-rate dependent and independent aspects of decision-making in a two-choice prediction task.

Decision-making, i.e. selecting an action from a number of alternatives when the outcome is uncertain, is a complex process that is important for everyday life.

Dissociation of inhibition from error processing using a parametric inhibitory task during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Inhibition, the process that overrides and reverses the execution of a thought, action, or emotion, is important in daily life. Sixteen healthy volunteers performed a parametrically modulated motor inhibition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two results were observed: (1) increased error-related anterior cingulate cortex activation and, (2) increased inferior frontal gyrus and medial prefrontal cortex activation during inhibition, irrespective of errors.

Neurobiology of decision-making: quo vadis?

Decision-making is an important aspect of daily life. Moreover, dysfunctions of decision-making play a critical role in a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. Several important research groups have contributed a diverse set of approaches to study decision-making and its underlying neurobiology.

Superior temporal gyrus and insula provide response and outcome-dependent information during assessment and action selection in a decision-making situation.

Decision-making is a complex process that comprises the assessment of a situation, the selection of an action, and the evaluation of an outcome. Distinct neural systems may contribute differentially during various stages within a decision-making situation. This study investigated whether neural activation during assessment or action selection is critically dependent on previous outcomes or actions.

Increased risk-taking decision-making but not altered response to punishment in stimulant-using young adults.

Stimulant-using and stimulant-naive young adults performed the "risky gains" decision-making task [Paulus, M.P., Rogalsky, C.

Dose-dependent decrease of activation in bilateral amygdala and insula by lorazepam during emotion processing.

Background: Functional neuroimaging may elucidate the pathophysiologic features of anxiety disorders and the site of action of anxiolytic drugs. A large body of evidence suggests that the amygdala and associated limbic structures play a critical role in the expression of anxiety and may be treatment targets for anxiolytic drugs.

Objective: To determine whether lorazepam dose-dependently attenuates blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) activation in the amygdala and associated limbic structures during an emotion face assessment task.

Level of response to alcohol and brain response during visual working memory.

Objective: This study examined neural correlates of the low level of response to alcohol using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) during a challenging visual working memory task.

Method: Participants were healthy adolescents (N = 35) with a range of drinking patterns recruited from local high schools. After a minimum 5 days of abstinence from alcohol and other drugs, FMRI, neuropsychological testing and the Self-Rating of the Effects of Alcohol were administered.

Cortical and subcortical brain regions involved in rule-based category learning.

The brain regions contributing to rule-based category learning were examined using fMRI. Participants categorized single lines that varied in length and orientation into one of two categories. Category membership was based on the length of the line.

Increased sensitivity to error during decision-making in bipolar disorder patients with acute mania.

Background: Decision-making is a complex and important function for daily life that can be assessed quantitatively using a simple two-choice prediction task. Bipolar disorder (BD) patients are thought to show altered responsivity to positive and negative feedback. In this study we examined whether BD patients with psychotic mania show altered patterns of decision-making as a function of the frequency of incorrect predictions or error rate.

Selective activation of the nucleus accumbens during risk-taking decision making.

This study implemented a risk-taking task during fMRI to probe the brain circuitry involved in risk-taking decision-making in 12 healthy control subjects. Partially supporting the initial hypotheses, deliberation prior to selection of safe relative to risky responses generated greater activation in the inferior frontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus; and deliberation prior to selection of risky relative to safe responses generated greater activation in medial frontal cortex, occipital cortex, nucleus accumbens and caudate. Additionally, accumbens activation correlated positively with the harm avoidance subscale of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) 125.

Anticipation of emotionally aversive visual stimuli activates right insula.

Understanding the neural substrates of anticipation is required for a comprehensive model of the ways in which anxiety influences information processing. While it is apparent that the insula and medial frontal cortex are involved in processing anticipation of physical (i.e.

An FMRI study of response inhibition in youths with a family history of alcoholism.

Disinhibition among alcoholics may precede or result from alcohol use disorders (AUDs). It remains unclear how disinhibition might contribute to AUD risk among youths with a family history of alcoholism (FHP). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore inhibition-related neural risk factors for AUD.

Contribution of functional neuroimaging to understanding neuropsychiatric side effects of interferon in hepatitis C.

Patients with hepatitis C who are treated with interferon may develop neuropsychiatric symptoms, including fatigue and depression. The authors discuss the potential use of functional neuroimaging in the identification and treatment of these patients. The authors provide an overview of functional neuroimaging studies of fatigue and depressive symptoms in various medical and psychiatric conditions and suggest future directions for research that may increase understanding of the specific neural substrates of neuropsychiatric side effects associated with hepatitis C and interferon treatment.

Functional subdivisions within anterior cingulate cortex and their relationship to autonomic nervous system function.

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has diverse functions and several functional subdivisions. This study implemented a counting Stroop task that presented incongruent (INC) and congruent (CON) stimuli at two speeds to probe dorsal (dACC) and ventral (vACC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Eighteen healthy subjects completed the task twice: once outside the scanner while heart rate variability (HRV) was recorded and once during fMRI.

The balance between approach and avoidance behaviors in a novel object exploration paradigm in mice.

Approach and avoidance are critical components of novelty seeking, which plays an important role in susceptibility to drug abuse and aspects of cognition. This experiment was designed to examine whether brief periods of handling or prior exposure to a novel environment affect various measures of novel object exploration in mice. Forty male C57BL/6J mice were handled by the experimenter or received minimal exposure to human contact.

Anterior cingulate activation in high trait anxious subjects is related to altered error processing during decision making.

Background: Individuals with high trait anxiety (HTA) can be studied to examine the effect of elevated levels of anxiety on the processing of stimuli and the selection of actions. The anterior cingulate cortex has been implicated in the detection and processing of errors. This investigation examined the hypothesis that HTA subjects are more sensitive to errors than nonanxious comparison subjects during a simple decision-making task and show increased activation in the anterior cingulate, particularly at low error rates.

From sensory processes to conscious perception.

In recent years, cognitive neuroscientists have began to explore the process of how sensory information gains access to awareness. To further probe this process, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used while testing subjects with a paradigm known as the "attentional blink." In this paradigm, visually presented information sporadically fails to reach awareness.

Trend detection via temporal difference model predicts inferior prefrontal cortex activation during acquisition of advantageous action selection.

The process of accurately predicting which actions are associated with advantageous versus disadvantageous outcomes is an important function of daily life. An integral part of this process is being able to detect when the association between an action and an outcome changes. This investigation examined the hypothesis that the inferior prefrontal cortex is critical for the detection of trends and that a trend process derived from the temporal difference model accomplishes this detection.