Anticipatory Anxiety Disrupts Neural Valuation during Risky Choice
Anticipatory Anxiety Disrupts Neural Valuation during Risky Choice
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DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.2880-14.2015
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发表时间：
2015-02-18
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Ruff, Christian C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Engelmann, Jan B.;Meyer, Friederike;Ruff, Christian C.
与当前任务无关的附带负面情绪，如背景焦虑，可以强烈影响决策。这在与广泛性情绪障碍相关的精神障碍中最为明显。然而，偶然情绪可能影响选择的神经机制仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了偶然性焦虑对人类风险决策的影响，重点是行为偏好及其潜在的神经过程。尽管在高和低附带焦虑的情感背景下，可观察到的选择保持稳定，但我们发现神经评估信号发生了明显变化：在高偶然性焦虑期间，腹内侧前额叶皮层和腹侧纹状体的活动显示出以下方面的显著减少：（1）对风险选项的预期主观价值（ESV）的神经编码，（2）对观察到的选择的预测，（3）与评估系统其他领域的功能耦合，以及（4）基线活动。与此同时，前额叶的活动显示出对风险彩票负ESV的编码增加，这种神经活动预测了风险彩票是否会被拒绝。这种结果模式表明，偶然性焦虑可以将神经评估的重点从可能的积极后果转移到选择选项的预期消极后果。此外，我们的研究结果表明，神经价值编码的这些变化可以在没有明显行为变化的情况下发生。这表明背景焦虑可能导致慢性奖励脱敏的发展和对消极认知的适应不良，在情感和焦虑障碍中普遍存在。
Incidental negative emotions unrelated to the current task, such as background anxiety, can strongly influence decisions. This is most evident in psychiatric disorders associated with generalized emotional disturbances. However, the neural mechanisms by which incidental emotions may affect choices remain poorly understood. Here we study the effects of incidental anxiety on human risky decision making, focusing on both behavioral preferences and their underlying neural processes. Although observable choices remained stable across affective contexts with high and low incidental anxiety, we found a clear change in neural valuation signals: during high incidental anxiety, activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum showed a marked reduction in (1) neural coding of the expected subjective value (ESV) of risky options, (2) prediction of observed choices, (3) functional coupling with other areas of the valuation system, and (4) baseline activity. At the same time, activity in the anterior insula showed an increase in coding the negative ESV of risky lotteries, and this neural activity predicted whether the risky lotteries would be rejected. This pattern of results suggests that incidental anxiety can shift the focus of neural valuation from possible positive consequences to anticipated negative consequences of choice options. Moreover, our findings show that these changes in neural value coding can occur in the absence of changes in overt behavior. This suggest a possible pathway by which background anxiety may lead to the development of chronic reward desensitization and a maladaptive focus on negative cognitions, as prevalent in affective and anxiety disorders.