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总体上提高认知表现方面产生实质性的好处。然而，认知努力通常被认为是厌恶的，这一点从对努力参与的重大行为偏见中可见一斑。在健康的成年人中，在厌恶的个体如何发现认知努力方面似乎存在可测量的差异，这是导致表现差异的原因，无法用智力测量来解释。努力可能在麻木和冷漠的障碍中尤其令人反感。例如，这可能解释了为什么患有严重抑郁症的人在低努力任务中表现出平均水平，而在要求高要求的任务中表现得低于平均水平。尽管在健康人和精神障碍患者中存在这种对认知投入的中心偏见，但对于为什么认知努力是令人厌恶的，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，该项目使用了一种新的行为经济学范式来发展认知努力的神经经济学。这种新的范式首次产生了对认知努力成本的量化、介于个体估计之间和范围内的估计。本研究的第一个目的是通过证明主观成本估计与传统的认知努力的生理和自我报告测量之间的相关性来验证新的范式。下一步，该范式将被用来调查个人和任务特定的因素，这些因素使得认知努力主观上代价高昂。结合功能磁共振成像和瞳孔测量将被用来探索关于认知努力的生理标记物的具体假设。最后，随着神经经济学的最新进展，新的成本估计将用于在个人决定是否参与高要求的任务时收集的fMRI数据的参数测试。这一方法将被用来测试关于神经系统的特定假设，这些神经系统参与正在进行的和未来的决定，以扩大健康成年人的认知努力。因此，这项工作也将为阐明为什么认知努力可能在抑郁症中特别令人厌恶提供了基础。

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.