Separate Neural Networks for Gains and Losses in Intertemporal Choice

Yang-Yang Zhang,Lijuan Xu,Shu Li,Bing Hou,Yuan Zhou,Zhu-Yuan Liang,Kun Wang,Tianzi Jiang

doi:10.1007/s12264-018-0267-x

Abstract

An important and unresolved question is how human brain regions process information and interact with each other in intertemporal choice related to gains and losses. Using psychophysiological interaction and dynamic causal modeling analyses, we investigated the functional interactions between regions involved in the decision-making process while participants performed temporal discounting tasks in both the gains and losses domains. We found two distinct intrinsic valuation systems underlying temporal discounting in the gains and losses domains: gains were specifically evaluated in the medial regions, including the medial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, and losses were evaluated in the lateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, immediate reward or punishment was found to modulate the functional interactions between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and distinct regions in both the gains and losses domains: in the gains domain, the mesolimbic regions; in the losses domain, the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and insula. These findings suggest that intertemporal choice of gains and losses might involve distinct valuation systems, and more importantly, separate neural interactions may implement the intertemporal choices of gains and losses. These findings may provide a new biological perspective for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying intertemporal choice of gains and losses.

Highlights

Decisions about daily life, such as education, diet, investment, and saving, all involve intertemporal choices, which refer to decisions between smaller/sooner and larger/later rewards or punishments [1]
We found two distinct intrinsic valuation systems underlying temporal discounting in the gains and losses domains: gains were evaluated in the medial regions, including the medial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, and losses were evaluated in the lateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
We focused on the ventral striatum and the medial cortical regions, which have been implicated in reward valuation and the computation of goal values [24,25,26,27,28,29]; the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which exerts cognitive control of decision-making processes [29,30,31,32,33,34,35]; and the anterior cingulate and insula, which are involved in responding to aversive stimuli, the evaluation and representation of negative emotional states, and even pain [17, 36,37,38,39,40,41]

Summary

Introduction

Decisions about daily life, such as education, diet, investment, and saving, all involve intertemporal choices, which refer to decisions between smaller/sooner and larger/later rewards or punishments [1]. Several studies have reported that the aversion to losses declines more slowly than the attractiveness of gains as the delay increases, suggesting different neural correlations in intertemporal choice of gains and losses [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. These findings challenge the view that gains- and losses-related temporal discounting can be condensed into a single discount function [13]. Whether a single neural process underlies the intertemporal choices in gains and losses in particular, and whether the domain of gains and losses differentially alters interactions within decisionrelated regions of the brain remain unclear

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Conclusion