Journal article
A neuropsychological approach to understanding risk-taking for potential gains and losses
Frontiers in neuroscience, Vol.6, 15
01/01/2012
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00015
PMCID: PMC3273874
PMID: 22347161
Abstract
Affective neuroscience has helped guide research and theory development in judgment and decision-making by revealing the role of emotional processes in choice behavior, especially when risk is involved. Evidence is emerging that qualitatively and quantitatively different processes may be involved in risky decision-making for gains and losses. We start by reviewing behavioral work by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and others, which shows that risk-taking differs for potential gains and potential losses. We then turn to the literature in decision neuroscience to support the gain versus loss distinction. Relying in part on data from a new task that separates risky decision-making for gains and losses, we test a neural model that assigns unique mechanisms for risky decision-making involving potential losses. Included are studies using patients with lesions to brain areas specified as important in the model and studies with healthy individuals whose brains are scanned to reveal activation in these and other areas during risky decision-making. In some cases, there is evidence that gains and losses are processed in different regions of the brain, while in other cases the same region appears to process risk in a different manner for gains and losses. At a more general level, we provide strong support for the notion that decisions involving risk-taking for gains and decisions involving risk-taking for losses represent different psychological processes. At a deeper level, we present mounting evidence that different neural structures play different roles in guiding risky choices in these different domains. Some structures are differentially activated by risky gains and risky losses while others respond uniquely in one domain or the other. Taken together, these studies support a clear functional dissociation between risk-taking for gains and risk-taking for losses, and further dissociation at the neural level.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A neuropsychological approach to understanding risk-taking for potential gains and losses
- Creators
- Irwin P. Levin - University of IowaGui Xue - University of Southern CaliforniaJoshua A. Weller - Decision ResearchMartin Reimann - University of Southern CaliforniaMarco Lauriola - Sapienza University of RomeAntoine Bechara - University of Southern California
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Frontiers in neuroscience, Vol.6, 15
- DOI
- 10.3389/fnins.2012.00015
- PMID
- 22347161
- PMCID
- PMC3273874
- NLM abbreviation
- Front Neurosci
- ISSN
- 1662-4548
- eISSN
- 1662-453X
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media Sa
- Number of pages
- 11
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2012
- Academic Unit
- Marketing; Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984963190102771
Metrics
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