Abstract
In recent years the problem of how inter-individual differences play a role in risk-taking behavior has become a much debated issue. We investigated this problem based on the well-known balloon analog risk task (BART) in 48 healthy subjects in which participants inflate a virtual balloon opting for a higher score in the face of a riskier chance of the balloon explosion. In this study, based on a structural Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM) technique we demonstrate a significant positive correlation between BART score and size of the gray matter volume in the anterior insula in riskier subjects. Although the anterior insula is among the candidate brain areas that were involved in the risk taking behavior in fMRI studies, here based on our structural data it is the only area that was significantly related to structural variation among different subjects.
Highlights
Uncertainty about the future is a fact of life
Four participants were removed from the study because they produced extreme outlier negative balloon analog risk task (BART) scores which were greater than 2 S.D.S from population mean
Based on the previous neuroimaging findings (Kuhnen and Knutson, 2005; van ‘t Wout et al, 2005; Fecteau et al, 2007; Rao et al, 2008; Strenziok et al, 2011; Fukunaga et al, 2012), we hypothesized a number of brain areas such as the anterior insula (Tversky, 1992), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), vmPFC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) would be candidates for showing the expected relationship
Summary
Uncertainty about the future is a fact of life. Any future event arising from our own deeds or completely out of control, can be conceived of as a form of gamble which may improve or impair one’s well-being by some probability distribution. Looking at future in terms of probability distributions permits quantifying the degree of uncertainty in various forms that are collectively known as the measures of risk (Schultz, 2010). Contextual factors that modulate one’s attitude toward risk have been studied extensively in economics and psychology (Tversky, 1979, 1992; Damasio, 1996). Some individuals are more likely to buy a lottery ticket with their Saturday morning newspaper than others These trait-like inter-individual variations can operate in parallel to the contextual factors mentioned above and Variations in brain structures of risky adults they contribute to substantial variability in risk-ridden behavior (Elke and Weber, 1997; Bach and Dolan, 2012). The biological basis of these inter-individual differences are much less studied and understood compared to the case for contextual modulators of attitude toward risk
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