The neural and cognitive representation of money in decision-making

我的研究的总体目标是了解心理和神经机制，这些机制支持决策中的偏见，导致次优选择。我在赌博行为的特定背景下研究这一点。大多数关于人类决策的研究，包括关于赌博的研究，都用金钱来代表积极和消极的结果（即输赢），并激励参与者。然而，从心理学的角度来看，货币是一种不寻常的商品。它没有内在的价值;相反，金钱的价值是在童年时期学到的，基于它能够交换理想商品的能力。在非人类物种中没有金钱的等价物。此外，消费者心理学的研究表明，与实物现金相比，我们更愿意以某种形式花钱，例如信用卡。货币的这些特性与行为神经科学（例如，非人类物种决策的翻译模型的有效性）和公共政策（例如，赌场的顾客是否应该被允许使用信用卡赌博？）有关。这项建议的长期目标是描述金钱在风险决策中的心理作用。***首先，使用行为的措施，我们将研究一个经典的行为经济学测试之间的关系“损失厌恶”（倾向于过重的财务损失相对于同等大小的收益）和赌博行为的真实的老虎机在我们的“赌场实验室”。第二，我们将进行行为测试，涉及操纵对金钱的心理感知。当玩现金游戏与玩信用游戏，或玩天赋资金与已赚取的资金时，财务决策如何变化？当利润以累积分数的形式呈现时，与每次决策后支付（“实现”）收益和损失时相比，财务决策有何不同？第三，我们将使用功能性脑成像来研究这些因素如何影响货币决策的神经表征，重点是腹侧纹状体和腹内侧前额叶皮层，这是处理财务决策和结果的关键大脑区域。相对于结果的客观值，这些大脑信号也可能被扭曲。我的实验室的方法在研究包括现代老虎机在内的现实赌博游戏中的决策过程中是独一无二的，然后采用神经科学工具来阐明这些行为偏见的大脑基础。通过描述这些货币效应，预期的结果将为优化金融决策的行为知情策略奠定基础，并将专门指导赌博政策（例如赌场中的信用卡或手机支付选项），以减少加拿大人与赌博相关的危害。

The overall goal of my research is to understand the psychological and neural mechanisms that underpin biases in decision-making, giving rise to suboptimal choices. I study this in the specific context of gambling behavior. Most research on human decision-making, including research on gambling, uses money to represent positive and negative outcomes (i.e. wins and losses) and incentivize participants. Yet from a psychological perspective, money is an unusual commodity. It has no inherent value; rather, the value of money is learned in childhood, based upon its capacity to be exchanged for desirable goods. There is no equivalent of money in non-human species. Moreover, research from consumer psychology indicates that we are more willing to spend money in certain forms, for example on a credit card compared to physical cash. These peculiarities of money are relevant to both behavioural neuroscience (e.g. validity of translational models of decision-making in non-human species) and public policy (e.g. should casino patrons be allowed to gamble using a credit card?). The long-term objective of this proposal is to characterize the psychological role of money in risky decision-making. ***We will commence this program with three short-term objectives. First, using behavioural measures, we will examine the relationship between a classical behavioural economic test of ‘loss aversion' (the tendency to over-weight financial losses relative to equivalently-sized gains) and gambling behavior on real slot machines in our ‘Casino Lab'. Second, we will conduct behavioural tests that involve manipulating the psychological perception of money. How do financial decisions vary when playing with cash versus playing on credit, or playing with gifted funds versus funds that have been earned? How do financial decisions vary when profits are presented as a cumulative score, compared to when the gains and losses are paid out (‘realized') after each decision? Third, we will use functional brain imaging to examine how these factors influence the neural representation of monetary decision-making, focusing on the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex as brain regions that are critical for processing financial decisions and outcomes. These brain signals can also be distorted relative to the objective value of the outcomes. My lab's approach is unique in studying decision-making during realistic gambling games including modern slot machines, and then employing neuroscience tools to elucidate the brain basis of these behavioural biases. By characterizing these monetary effects, the anticipated results will lay a foundation for behaviourally-informed strategies to optimize financial decision-making, and will specifically guide gambling policy (e.g. credit card or cellphone payment options in casinos) to reduce the harms associated with gambling among Canadians.