The neural and cognitive representation of money in decision-making

我的研究的总体目标是了解在决策过程中支撑偏见的心理和神经机制，这些机制会导致次优选择。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，都使用金钱来表现积极和消极的结果(即输赢)，并激励参与者。然而，从心理学的角度来看，金钱是一种不同寻常的商品。它没有固有的价值；相反，金钱的价值是在童年时期学习的，基于其交换理想商品的能力。在非人类物种中，没有等价物。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，例如购买信用卡。货币的这些特性与行为神经科学(例如，非人类物种决策转换模型的有效性)和公共政策(例如，是否应该允许赌场顾客使用信用卡赌博？)有关。这项提议的长期目标是描述金钱在高风险决策中的心理作用。 我们将以三个短期目标开始这一计划。首先，使用行为测量方法，我们将研究经典的行为经济学损失厌恶测试(相对于同等规模的收益，高估金融损失的倾向)与我们赌场实验室中的真实老虎机赌博行为之间的关系。其次，我们将进行涉及操纵人们对金钱的心理感知的行为测试。当玩现金和玩信用游戏，或者玩天赋基金和已经赚到的基金时，财务决策有什么不同？当利润作为累积分数显示时，财务决策与在每次决策后支付(实现)收益和损失相比有什么不同？第三，我们将使用脑功能成像来研究这些因素如何影响货币决策的神经表征，重点关注腹侧纹状体和腹内侧额前皮质作为处理金融决策和结果的关键大脑区域。相对于结果的客观价值，这些大脑信号也可能被扭曲。我的实验室的方法在研究现实赌博游戏(包括现代老虎机)中的决策过程方面是独一无二的，然后利用神经科学工具来解释这些行为偏差的大脑基础。通过表征这些货币影响，预期结果将为行为知情战略奠定基础，以优化金融决策，并将具体指导赌博政策(例如，赌场的信用卡或手机支付选择)，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.