Abstract
The more times people fail the more likely they are to give up, however little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this impact of repeated failure on decision making. Here we have used a visual shape discrimination task with computer-controlled feedback combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural circuits involved. The behavioral task confirmed that the more times subjects experienced failure the more likely they were to give up, with three successive failures being the key threshold and the majority of subjects reaching the point where they decided to quit and try a new stimulus set after three or four failures. The fMRI analysis revealed activity changes in frontal, parietal, temporal, limbic and striatal regions, especially anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and temporal parietal junction (TPJ) associated with the number of previous failures experienced. Furthermore, their parameter estimates were predictive of subjects’ quitting rate. Thus, subjects reach the point where they decide to quit after three/four failures and this is associated with differential changes in brain regions involved in error monitoring and reward which regulate both failure detection and changes in decision-making strategy.
Highlights
The more times people fail the more likely they are to give up, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this impact of repeated failure on decision making
The brain areas most closely associated with the number of times negative feedback was received, and predictive of whether subjects gave up, were the dACC in particular and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and temporal parietal junction (TPJ)
We found activity and functional connectivity changes in the dACC, PCC and TPJ were associated with receiving negative feedback, which is consistent with previous studies[18,27]
Summary
The more times people fail the more likely they are to give up, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this impact of repeated failure on decision making. The fMRI analysis revealed activity changes in frontal, parietal, temporal, limbic and striatal regions, especially anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and temporal parietal junction (TPJ) associated with the number of previous failures experienced Their parameter estimates were predictive of subjects’ quitting rate. Animals and humans need the capacity for reinforcement learning to internally monitor responses and to evaluate external reinforcement or feedback[10], and learn by trial and error to act in a manner that maximizes reward and minimizes punishment[11,12] This process applies to many different situations and appears to be supported by subcortical and cortical neural networks[13,14,15,16,17]. We further hypothesized that the frontal and limbic brain regions involved in decision making and controlling the effects of repeated failure would be involved, and exhibit changes in activity and functional connectivity associated with behavioral performance
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