Aging-related changes in reward-based decision-making depend on punishment frequency: An fMRI study

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Aging Neuroscience

Guozhi Luo¹  Donghui Wu¹  Han Rong²  Meiling Tan³  Jiayin Huang³  Ping Ren³ 

[1] Department of Geriatric Psychiatry, Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China;Department of Psychiatry, Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China;Lab of Brain Health Assessment and Research, Shenzhen Mental Health Center, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China;Department of Geriatric Psychiatry, Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China;

关键词: decision making;    reward;    aging;    fMRI;    frontal subregion;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnagi.2023.1078455

 received in 2022-10-24, accepted in 2023-02-15,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionAging is often accompanied by significant cognitive decline and altered decision making. Previous studies have found that older adults have difficulty in processing reward/risk information, leading to suboptimal decision strategy. However, it is still under investigated about the neural substrates of risky decision-making under ambiguity in aging.MethodsUsing the Iowa Gambling Task, the current study investigated inter-individual differences of risk-taking behaviors in healthy older adults with task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging.ResultsIt was found that participants were able to improve their decisions in advantageous decks, but failed to avoid disadvantageous decks during task performance. The task-related activations within multiple brain regions were observed significantly different across the four decks, and showed negative correlations with age in disadvantageous decks but not in advantageous decks. Consistently, age-related whole brain analyses confirmed the negative age-effect on brain activations in disadvantageous decks, especially in high punishment frequency. In addition, the relationship between age and task performance in high punishment frequency was mediated by activation in the frontal subregions such as the middle frontal cortex and superior medial frontal cortex.DiscussionOur findings shed light on the neural substrates of altered risk-taking behaviors in aging, suggesting a greater sensitivity to high punishment frequency in older adults.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 Ren, Luo, Huang, Tan, Wu and Rong.