A Novel Method to Improve Decision-Making in Young Adults and Adolescents

描述（申请人提供）：。几项研究报告说，在最广泛使用的实验决策任务，爱荷华赌博任务（IGT）中，男性的表现优于女性。男性的优势被认为是由于IGT过程中前额皮质（RFC）区域激活的性别差异。PET图像显示，雌性小鼠在IGT过程中激活了左内侧眶前额叶皮层（ORB）；而男性则激活右侧外侧ORB、右侧顶叶和右侧背外侧前额叶皮层（DL RFC, BA 9,10）。有趣的是，在两性中，在考虑个人道德困境时，内侧和外侧的BA 9,10区域都被激活。我们最近表明，当女性在IGT的表现中间歇性地考虑PM困境时，她们的表现提高到男性的水平。结果表明，在执行两项任务时，PFC电路的利用发生了变化。这一点在女性IGT表现和嗅觉能力测试表现之间的相关性变化中得到了证实。这些数据表明，决策中的性别差异并不是天生的，而是可以被其发生的认知/神经环境所改变的。如果这种新的决策增强效应在未来有实际应用，首先必须证明这种效应具有剩余力，即在选择行为之前考虑道德困境可以改善决策。提出的研究旨在确定(1)在做决策之前考虑个人道德困境是否能提高绩效，即在正常的年轻人中是否存在启动效应，如果存在，持续时间是多长？（初步数据显示存在启动效应）和(2)同时或事先考虑个人道德困境是否能提高青少年参与者的IGT表现。我们实验室公布的数据表明，相对于成年人，青少年在IGT上的表现较差。这些数据为比较增强效果的结果提供了一个基准。研究与公共卫生的相关性：这项研究将产生的信息将促进我们对决策灵活性的认识，以及如何通过改变认知/神经环境来改善决策灵活性。这项研究的重点是年轻人和青少年，他们在滥用药物时做出错误决定，对神经认知产生持久影响的潜在风险最高。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): . Several studies report that males out-perform females on the most widely used experimental decision- making task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The male advantage is thought to be due to sex differences in regional activation of prefrontal cortex (RFC) during IGT performance. PET imagery shows that females activate left medial orbital prefrontal cortex (ORB) during IGT performance; while males activate right lateral ORB, right parietal lobe, and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL RFC, BA 9,10). Interestingly, in both genders, medial and lateral BA 9,10 regions are bilaterally activated during deliberation of Personal Moral (PM) dilemmas. We have recently shown that females' performance improves to the level of males when they intermittently deliberate PM dilemmas during performance of the IGT. The results suggested that there was a shift in the utilization of PFC circuitry while performing the two tasks. This was substantiated by changes among females in correlations between IGT performance and performance on olfactory ability tests. The data indicate that sex differences in decision-making are not hardwired but are modifiable by the cognitive/neural contexts in which they occur If this novel decision-enhancing effect is to have practical future applications, it must first be shown that the effect has residual power, i.e. that deliberation of moral dilemmas prior to choice behavior can improve the decision-making. The proposed studies are designed to determine (1) if deliberation of personal moral dilemmas prior to decision-making improves performance, i.e. is there a priming effect in normal young adults and, if so, what is its duration? (Preliminary data show that there is a priming effect) and (2) if either concurrent or prior deliberations of personal moral dilemmas improve IGT performance in adolescent participants. Published data from our lab show that that adolescents perform poorly on the IGT relative to adults. Those data provide a baseline against which to compare the results of the enhancement effect. Relevance of Research to Public Health: This study will produce information that will advance our knowledge of the flexibility of decision-making and how it may be improved by changing cognitive/neural contexts. The proposed study focuses on young adults and adolescents in the age range with the highest potential risk for lasting neurocognitive effects of making poor decisions relative to substances of abuse.