Neuro- and Behavioral Economics of Cognitive Effort

描述（由申请人提供）：持续的、密集的认知努力可以在改善决策和普遍增强认知表现方面产生实质性的好处。然而，认知努力常常被视为令人厌恶的，对努力投入的大量行为偏见就证明了这一点。在健康的成年人中，个体对认知努力的厌恶程度似乎存在可测量的差异，这导致了表现上的差异，这无法用智力指标来解释。努力可能特别令人厌恶的紊乱的无活力和冷漠。这也许可以解释为什么患有严重抑郁症的人，例如，在低努力的任务中表现一般，但在要求高的任务中表现低于平均水平。尽管这种对健康个体和精神障碍患者的认知投入的中心偏见很重要，但对于为什么认知努力是厌恶的，或者关于参与任务投入决策的神经系统，人们知之甚少。为了解决这一差距，本项目利用一种新的行为经济学范式来发展认知努力的神经经济学。这种新的范式产生了有史以来第一次，定量的，在个体之间和内部对认知努力成本的估计。本研究的第一个目的是通过证明主观成本估算与传统的生理和自我报告的认知努力测量之间的相关性来验证这一新的范式。接下来，该范式将用于研究使认知努力主观上昂贵的个人和任务特定因素。功能磁共振成像和瞳孔测量相结合将用于探索有关认知努力的生理标记的特定假设。最后，随着神经经济学的最新进展，新的成本估计将用于个体决定是否参与高要求任务时收集的fMRI数据的参数测试。这种方法将用于测试有关神经系统的特定假设，这些神经系统涉及健康成年人正在进行的和预期的认知努力的决定。因此，这项工作也将为阐明为什么认知努力在抑郁症中可能特别令人厌恶提供基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sustained, intensive cognitive effort can yield substantial benefits in terms of improved decision-making and generally enhanced cognitive performance. Cognitive effort, however, is often treated as aversive, as evidenced by substantial behavioral biases against effortful engagement. Among healthy adults, there appear to be measurable differences in how aversive individuals find cognitive effort, contributing to differences in performance, unexplained by measures of intelligence. Effort may be particularly aversive in disorders of anergia and apathy. It may explain why individuals with Major Depression, for example, demonstrate average performance on low effort tasks yet perform below average on demanding tasks. Despite the import of this central bias against cognitive engagement among healthy individuals and those with mental disorder, little is understood about why cognitive effort is aversive, or about the neural systems involved in decisions about task engagement. To address this gap, this project utilizes a novel behavioral economic paradigm towards the development of a neuroeconomics of cognitive effort. The novel paradigm yields first-ever, quantitative, between and within individual estimates of the cost of cognitive effort. The first Aim of this study seeks to validate the novel paradigm by demonstrating correlations of subjective cost estimates with traditional physiological and self-report measures of cognitive effort. Next, the paradigm will be used to investigate individual and task specific factors which make cognitive effort subjectively costly. Combined fMRI and pupillometry will be used to probe specific hypotheses about physiological markers of cognitive effort. Finally, following recent advances in neuroeconomics, the novel cost estimates will be used in parametric tests of fMRI data collected as individuals decide whether to engage in demanding tasks. This approach will be used to test specific hypotheses about the neural systems involved in on-going and prospective decisions to expend cognitive effort among healthy adults. This work will also thereby provide a foundation for elucidating why cognitive effort may be particularly aversive in depression.