Cognitive Bases of Risk-taking Over the Lifespan: Psychophysics & Brain Imaging

描述（由申请人提供）：我们对风险的态度几乎影响了我们行为的方方面面。它影响我们滥用药物的意愿，进行有效的金融投资，以及在医疗保健选项中进行选择。我们知道，这些态度随着生命的变化而变化，这些变化使我们在年龄增长时以不同的方式变得脆弱。青少年从事危险的行为，大大增加了他们的死亡率。老年人通常表现出相反的形象，避免冒险行为的错误。但是，随着年龄的增长，我们的行为会发生什么变化呢？衰老的哪些特定行为倾向和神经生物学特征可以解释我们对风险态度的变化？在这个应用程序中，我们建议结合联合收割机的经济，心理和神经生物学的方法来研究的风险行为，努力描绘一幅画像的风险态度在整个生命周期的行为和神经水平。 行为经济学分析表明，冒险行为源于对风险的三种基本独立的态度：（1）技术风险厌恶，反映收益或损失的可能性与这些收益和损失的幅度之间的权衡，（2）模糊厌恶，反映受试者对不确定性的敏感性，以及（3）损失厌恶，这反映了主体对损失和收益的不同敏感性。 我们假设，在整个生命周期中，风险承担行为的减少主要是由于模糊厌恶的增加，而不是风险或损失态度的增加。此外，我们假设，如果有的话，随着年龄的增长，人类在技术上应该变得不那么厌恶风险和损失。在神经水平上，我们也知道大脑发育中有明确的结构模式，这些结构模式很可能是在整个生命周期中观察到的这些行为变化的基础。对我们的假设特别感兴趣的是观察到额叶区域成熟较晚，实际上在发育过程中变薄，并且实际上在整个生命周期中继续变薄。额叶皮层决策区的激活模式在整个生命周期中也会发生变化。这些数据表明，额叶皮层的形态和功能特性可能有助于这些变化的风险相关行为在整个生命周期中，一个假设，我们建议测试与行为和功能成像技术的混合。 公共卫生相关性：我们对风险的态度几乎决定了我们行为的方方面面，包括我们是否愿意滥用药物，是否愿意进行有效的金融投资，以及是否愿意在医疗保健方案中做出选择。我们知道，这些态度随着生命的变化而变化，这些变化使我们在年龄增长时以不同的方式变得脆弱。我们提出了一个精确的行为和神经基础的风险态度在整个生命周期的分析，努力更好地了解行为的神经基础，如药物滥用，青少年冒险，和医疗决策。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our attitude towards risk shapes nearly every aspect of our behavior. It affects our willingness to take drugs of abuse, to make efficient financial investments, and to select amongst healthcare options. We know that these attitudes change over the lifespan and that these changes make us vulnerable in different ways as we age. Adolescents engage in risky behaviors that hugely increase their mortality rates. Elders typically show the opposite profile, avoiding risky behaviors to a fault. But what is it about our behavior that changes as we age? What specific behavioral propensities and neurobiological features of aging can account for the changing attitudes we take towards risks? In this application we propose to combine economic, psychological and neurobiological approaches to the study of risky behavior in an effort to paint a portrait of risk attitudes across the lifespan at the behavioral and neural levels. Behavioral economic analyses suggests that risk-taking behavior results from the three largely independent attitudes towards risks: (1) Technical risk-aversion, which reflects a trade- off between the probability of gains or losses and the magnitude of those gains and losses, (2) Ambiguity aversion, which reflects the subject's sensitivity to uncertainty, and (3) Loss aversion, which reflects a subject's differential sensitivity to losses and gains. We hypothesize that the reduction in risk-taking behavior across the lifespan that is widely observed is primarily due to an increase in ambiguity aversion, rather than to an increase in risk or loss attitudes. Further, we hypothesize that, if anything, humans should become less technically risk averse and loss averse as they age. At the neural level, we also know that there are clear structural patterns in brain development that may well underlie these behavioral changes observed across the lifespan. Of particular interest to our hypothesis is the observation that frontal regions mature late, actually thinning during development and actually continue to thin throughout the lifespan. Activational patterns fronto-cortical decision areas also change throughout the lifespan. These data suggest that both morphologic and functional properties of the frontal cortex may contribute to these changes in risk-related behavior over the lifespan, a hypothesis we propose to test with a mixture of behavioral and functional imaging techniques. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Our attitude towards risk shapes nearly every aspect of our behavior, including our willingness to take drugs of abuse, to make efficient financial investments, and to select amongst healthcare options. We know that these attitudes change over the lifespan and that these changes make us vulnerable in different ways as we age. We propose an analysis of the precise behavioral and neural basis of risk attitudes across the lifespan in an effort to better understand the neural basis of behaviors such as drug abuse, adolescent risk-taking, and healthcare decision-making.