PREFRONTAL BRAIN ACTIVITY PREDICTS TEMPORALLY EXTENDED DECISION-MAKING BEHAVIOR

• Published in: Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior Vol. 84; no. 3; pp. 537 - 554
• Main Authors: Yarkoni, Tal, Braver, Todd S., Gray, Jeremy R., Green, Leonard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2005; Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior; Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Inc
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Behavior; Behavioral Science Research; Brain; Brain - physiology; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Brain Mapping; Brain research; brain-behaviour; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; choice; Choice Behavior; Cognitive Processes; College students; Decision Making; Decision Making - physiology; Diagnostic Tests; Dominance, Cerebral - physiology; Economic Factors; Female; functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Individual Differences; Linear Models; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; maximizing; Motivation; Neurosciences; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Predictor Variables; Prefrontal Cortex - physiology; Psychological Studies; Resistance (Psychology); Retention (Psychology) - physiology; Reward; Sampling; Section III: Discrimination, Choice, and Cortical Brain Activity; Statistics as Topic; temporal integration; Time Perception - physiology
• ISSN: 0022-5002; 1938-3711; 0022-5002
• DOI: 10.1901/jeab.2005.121-04

Although functional neuroimaging studies of human decision‐making processes are increasingly common, most of the research in this area has relied on passive tasks that generate little individual variability. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ability of brain activity to predict overt behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying behavior during a dynamic decision task that required subjects to select smaller, short‐term monetary payoffs in order to receive larger, long‐term gains. The number of trials over which the long‐term gains accrued was manipulated experimentally (2 versus 12). Event‐related neural activity in right lateral prefrontal cortex, a region associated with high‐level cognitive processing, selectively predicted choice behavior in both conditions, whereas insular cortex responded to fluctuations in amount of reward but did not predict choice behavior. These results demonstrate the utility of a functional neuroimaging approach in behavioral psychology, showing that (a) highly circumscribed brain regions are capable of predicting complex choice behavior, and (b) fMRI has the ability to dissociate the contributions of different neural mechanisms to particular behavioral tasks.