Neuro- and Behavioral Economics of Cognitive Effort

描述（由申请人提供）：持续、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益处。然而，认知努力通常被视为厌恶性的，这一点可以从对努力参与的大量行为偏见中得到证明。在健康的成年人中，厌恶的个体如何发现认知努力似乎存在可测量的差异，导致表现差异，无法用智力测量来解释。在无力和冷漠的疾病中，努力可能特别令人厌恶。它可以解释为什么患有严重抑郁症的人，例如，在低努力任务中表现出平均表现，但在高要求任务中表现低于平均水平。尽管在健康个体和精神障碍者中存在这种反对认知参与的中心偏见，但人们对认知努力为什么令人厌恶，或者对参与任务参与决策的神经系统知之甚少。为了解决这个差距，这个项目利用了一个新的行为经济学范式对认知努力的神经经济学的发展。新的范式产生了有史以来第一次，定量的，在个人之间和认知努力的成本估计。本研究的第一个目的是通过展示主观成本估计与认知努力的传统生理和自我报告措施的相关性来验证新的范式。接下来，该范式将用于调查使认知努力主观成本高昂的个人和任务特定因素。结合功能磁共振成像和瞳孔测量将被用来探测有关认知努力的生理标志物的具体假设。最后，随着神经经济学的最新进展，新的成本估计将用于fMRI数据的参数测试，这些数据是在个人决定是否从事高要求的任务时收集的。这种方法将被用来测试有关神经系统参与健康成年人的持续和前瞻性决策，以消耗认知努力的具体假设。因此，这项工作也将为阐明为什么认知努力在抑郁症中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.