Brain activity indicates risk-taking

Brain activity indicates risk appetite

05/02/2014

About three percent of the human brain is the body weight and with its approximately 100 billion nerve cells, it consumes about 15 percent of total energy needs. It is truly the masterpiece of evolution and far from unexplored.

Never before have people been able to decide as much as they do today. Philosophers as well as scientists have been asking for some time what exactly influences our risk behavior and why in some situations we take more risk than we otherwise would. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin may have come a step closer to answering that question. In a study in the journal „Proccedings of the National Academy of Science“ (PNAS), the researchers explain that certain areas are more active when making more risk-averse decisions.

Numerous studies in the past had already examined the interaction of brain regions and decision-making processes. Of particular interest was the question of whether the activity in individual areas of the brain would predict the decision made. Previous studies have shown that certain regions in the human brain help to evaluate different choices, ie are responsible for the ability to reflect.

For the current study, the scientists around Sarah Helfinstein examined 108 men and women between the ages of 21 and 50 with a functional magnetic resonance tomograph (fMRI) and recorded their brain activity during a special test. It was in the interest of the scientists how the risk behavior in the brain can be demonstrated.

Continue pumping or stop?
Previous studies have shown that people who have made risky choices in the BART test are more willing to take risks in real life. They usually smoked, took more drugs, had more exposed sex more often, and also had a riskier driving style.

During the experiment, participants pumped up an average of 18 balloons, stopping eleven times in time for the burst. The recorded data showed the researchers which brain regions were active before deciding to stop, and which ones pump more air in the decision.

72 percent of the decisions could be predicted
Using an algorithm, the data could be filtered. The researchers were able to correctly predict nearly 72 percent of the decisions made based on the activity pattern in the brain. However, many brain areas are involved in the decision to behave in a risk-taking manner, according to the researchers. In addition to the island cortex, the startum, thalamus and parietal lobes are also more active than usual. Whether other behavior can be predicted by recording brain activity in the future is an interesting idea and could provide material for many dystopias. (Fr)