Economic Games Quantify Diminished Sense of Guilt in Patients with Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex

Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) impairs concern for other people, as reflected in the dysfunctional real-life social behavior of patients with such damage, as well as their abnormal performances on tasks ranging from moral judgment to economic games. Despite these convergent data, we lack a formal model of how, and to what degree, VMPFC lesions affect an individual's social decision-making. Here we provide a quantification of these effects using a formal economic model of choice that incorporates terms for the disutility of unequal payoffs, with parameters that index behaviors normally evoked by guilt and envy. Six patients with focal VMPFC lesions participated in a battery of economic games that measured concern about payoffs to themselves and to others: dictator, ultimatum, and trust games. We analyzed each task individually, but also derived estimates of the guilt and envy parameters from aggregate behavior across all of the tasks. Compared with control subjects, the patients donated significantly less and were less trustworthy, and overall our model found a significant insensitivity to guilt. Despite these abnormalities, the patients had normal expectations about what other people would do, and they also did not simply generate behavior that was more noisy. Instead, the findings argue for a specific insensitivity to guilt, an abnormality that we suggest characterizes a key contribution made by the VMPFC to social behavior

Individual Differences in the Neural Signature of Subjective Value Among Older Adults

Some healthy older adults show departures from standard decision-making patterns exhibited by younger adults. We asked if such departures are uniform or if heterogeneous aging processes can designate which older adults show differing decision patterns. Thirty-three healthy older adults with varying decision-making patterns on a complex decision task (the Iowa Gambling Task) completed an intertemporal choice task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. We examined whether value representation in the canonical valuation network differed across older adults based on complex decision-making ability. Older adults with advantageous decision patterns showed increased activity in the valuation network, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and striatum. In contrast, older adults with disadvantageous decision patterns showed reduced or absent activation in the VMPFC and striatum, and these older adults also showed greater blood oxygen level dependent signal temporal variability in the striatum. Our results suggest that a reduced representation of value in the brain, possibly driven by increased neural noise, relates to suboptimal decision-making in a subset of older adults, which could translate to poor decision-making in many aspects of life, including finance, health and long-term care. Understanding the connection between suboptimal decision-making and neural value signals is a step toward mitigating age-related decision-making impairments

Adolescent Predictors of Binge Drinking in Adulthood: The Association with Psychiatric Disorders in Emerging Adulthood

This study investigates harsh parenting, parental drunkenness, deviant peers, adolescent alcohol use, academic performance, and emotional distress as experienced in adolescence on criteria for behavioral, substance use, affective, or anxiety disorders by age 23. This study also sought to understand how psychiatric disorders were associated with later binge drinking in adulthood (n = 501). Data come from a prospective 28-year longitudinal study of rural Midwestern families. Predictors at Time 1 were assessed in adolescence (15, 16, and 18 years old). Lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders was assessed in emerging adulthood (age 23), and binge drinking was self-reported at Time 3 (ages 27, 29, and 31). Results obtained from structure equation modeling and logistic regression using Mplus version 8 indicated deviant peers and low grade point average increased the likelihood of having met criteria for a behavioral disorder by age 23, while deviant peers and adolescent alcohol use increased the likelihood of having met criteria for a substance use disorder. Deviant peers and emotional distress in adolescence increased the likelihood for an affective disorder, while only emotional distress increased the likelihood for an anxiety disorder. Substance use disorder was associated with later binge drinking at ages 27-31. This study offers unique insight into how family, peer, and individual risk factors influence specific psychiatric disorders by age 23. Multiple informants provide a more complex understanding of how these risk factors influence later psychiatric diagnoses, as well as how externalizing disorders are associated with later binge drinking in adulthood

Effects of Age, Sex, and Neuropsychological Performance on Financial Decision-Making

The capacity to make sound financial decisions across the lifespan is critical for interpersonal, occupational, and psychological health and success. In the present study, we explored how healthy younger and older adults make a series of increasingly complex financial decisions. One-hundred sixteen healthy older adults, aged 56–90 years, and 102 college undergraduates, completed the Financial Decision-Making Questionnaire, which requires selecting and justifying financial choices across four hypothetical scenarios and answering questions pertaining to financial knowledge. Results indicated that Older participants significantly outperformed Younger participants on a multiple-choice test of acquired financial knowledge. However, after controlling for such pre-existing knowledge, several age effects were observed. For example, Older participants were more likely to make immediate investment decisions, whereas Younger participants exhibited a preference for delaying decision-making pending additional information. Older participants also rated themselves as more concerned with avoiding monetary loss (i.e., a prevention orientation), whereas Younger participants reported greater interest in financial gain (i.e., a promotion orientation). In terms of sex differences, Older Males were more likely to pay credit card bills and utilize savings accounts than were Older Females. Multiple positive correlations were observed between Older participants’ financial decision-making ability and performance on neuropsychological measures of non-verbal intellect and executive functioning. Lastly, the ability to justify one’s financial decisions declined with age, among the Older participants. Several of the aforementioned results parallel findings from the medical decision-making literature, suggesting that older adults make decisions in a manner that conserves diminishing cognitive resources

Effects of age-related differences in empathy on social economic decision-making

Background: The ways in which aging affects social economic decision-making is a central issue in the psychology of aging. To examine age-related differences in social economic decision-making as a function of empathy, 80 healthy volunteers participated in the Repeated Fixed Opponent Ultimatum Game (UG-R). Previous economic decision-making research has shown that in younger adults empathy is associated with prosocial behavior. The effects of empathy on older adult social economic decision-making are not well understood. Methods: On each of 20 consecutive trials in the UG-R, one player (“Proposer”) splits $10 with another player (“Responder”) who chooses either to accept (whereby both receive the proposed division) or reject (whereby neither receives anything). Trait cognitive and emotional empathy were measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Results: UG-R data were examined as a function of age and cognitive empathy. For “unfair” offers (i.e. offers less than$5), older Responders with high cognitive empathy showed less prosocial behavior and obtained greater payoffs than younger Responders with high cognitive empathy. Conclusions: High levels of cognitive empathy may differentially affect economic decision-making behavior in younger and older adults. For older adults, high cognitive empathy may play a role in obtaining high financial payoffs while for younger adults it may instead be involved in facilitating social relationships

Information use in risky decision making: Do age differences depend on affective context?

The current study focused on the degree to which decision context (deliberative vs. affective) differentially impacted the use of available information about uncertainty (i.e., probability, positive and negative outcome magnitudes, expected value, and variance/risk) when older adults were faced with decisions under risk. In addition, we examined whether individual differences in general mental ability and executive function moderated the associations between age and information use. Participants (N = 96) completed a neuropsychological assessment and the hot (affective) and cold (deliberative) versions of an explicit risk task. Our results did not find a significant Age x Hot/Cold Condition interaction on overall risk-taking. However, we found that older adults were less likely to use the full decision information available regardless of the decision context. This finding suggested more global age differences in information use. Moreover, older adults were less likely to make expected-value sensitive decisions. regardless of the hot/cold context. Finally, we found that low performance on measures of executive functioning. but not general mental ability, appears to be a risk factor for lower information use. This pattern appears in middle age and progressively becomes stronger in older age. The current work provides evidence that common underlying decision processes may operate in risk tasks deemed either affective or deliberative. It further suggests that underlying mechanisms such as information use may be paramount, relative to differences in the affective context. Additionally, individual differences in neuropsychological function may act as a moderator in the tendency to use available information across affective context

Verbal and Nonverbal Emotional Memory Following Unilateral Amygdala Damage

The amygdala is involved in the normal facilitation of memory by emotion, but the separate contributions of the left and right amygdala to memory for verbal or nonverbal emotional material have not been investigated. Fourteen patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe including the amygdala (seven left, seven right), 18 brain-damaged, and 36 normal controls were exposed to emotional and neutral pictures accompanied by verbal narratives. Memory for both narratives and pictures was assessed with a free recall test 24 h later. Subjects with left amygdala damage failed to show the normally robust enhancement of memory for verbal and nonverbal emotional stimuli. The group with right amygdala damage showed the normal pattern of facilitation of memory by emotion for both verbal and nonverbal stimuli despite an overall reduction in memory performance. Furthermore, subjects with left amygdala damage were disproportionately impaired on memory for emotional narratives as compared with memory for emotional pictures. The latter finding offers partial support for a lateralized and material-specific pattern of the amygdala's contribution to emotional memory

The role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in purchase intent among older adults

Older adults are frequently the targets of scams and deception, with millions of individuals being affected each year in the United States alone. Previous research has shown that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may play a role in vulnerability to fraud. The current study examined brain activation patterns in relation to susceptibility to scams and fraud using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-eight healthy, community-dwelling older adults were subdivided into groups of impaired and unimpaired decision makers as determined by their performance on the Iowa Gambling Task. While in the scanner, the participants viewed advertisements that were created directly from cases deemed deceptive by the Federal Trade Commission. We then obtained behavioral measures involving comprehension of claims and purchase intentions of the product in each advertisement. Contrasts show brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was less correlated with purchase intention in impaired versus unimpaired older adult decision makers. Our results have important implications for both future research and recognizing the possible causes of fraud susceptibility among older adults