A computational neuroscience approach to frontal compensation in decision-making

项目总结/摘要 决策过程中与风险相关的缺陷是有据可查的，这些决策往往具有巨大的社会影响。 对个人及其家庭成员的影响，导致巨大的压力，使最好的 决策以前的许多关于衰老的研究都集中在与历史无关的决策任务上， 当前的奖励与先前的决定无关。这项研究忽略了一些情况， 每个选项的当前奖励受先前决策的影响。历史相关决策 是无处不在的，他们往往伴随着各种形式的压力。我们实验室最近的研究表明 老年人在历史依赖的情况下表现更好，而年轻人在历史上表现更好- 独立的情况。然而，与这些相关的精确神经和计算机制 基于年龄的差异仍不清楚。此外，几乎没有研究探讨老年人如何 尽管压力普遍存在，但它会对压力做出反应。 最近的研究表明，正常的衰老与额纹状体神经调节功能的下降有关。 与决策相关的边缘网络。其他工作提供了补偿性过度的证据- 大脑区域的激活，特别是侧额叶脑区域，对于老年人相对于年轻人来说， 各种认知任务。这种过度激活被认为是对神经衰退的补偿， 这一假说被称为神经回路补偿相关利用假说（CRUNCH）。我们 假设代偿性过度激活可以解释与年龄相关的历史依赖性优势， 决策的此外，老年人的补偿相关额叶活动可能遵循倒U形， 随着认知需求的增加，随着认知需求的增加，老年人的激活不足， 相对于年轻的成年人，当达到"紧缩"点时，可能会导致。增加决策压力- 制造情境可能会迫使老年人达到这样的"临界点"。 本提案的目的是检查老化对历史依赖性和历史独立性的影响。 决策，并系统地测试CRUNCH假设的预测，因为它适用于决策， 在压力之下。我们的研究团队是高素质的，以实现这些目标，我们的专业知识， 脑成像、计算建模和正常老化和压力的行为研究。我们将应用 假设对数据和来自这些模型的预测误差采取定性不同策略的模型将 用作神经活动的回归变量。我们预测，老年人的DLPFC会表现出更大的激活， LOFC，与年轻人相比，在没有压力的条件下，但老年人将显示在- 在压力条件下在这些相同区域中活化。目的1和2检查神经生物学 历史依赖和历史独立决策中与年龄相关的变化的基础。目标3 通过研究压力下的决策，扩展了目标1和2。

Project Summary/Abstract Age-related deficits in decision making are well documented and these decisions often have huge social implications for individuals and their family members, leading to significant pressure to make the best decisions. Much of the previous research on aging focused on history-independent decision-making tasks for which current rewards are independent of previous decisions. This research ignores situations where the current rewards available from each option are influenced by previous decisions. History-dependent decisions are ubiquitous and they are often accompanied by various forms of pressure. Recent work in our labs suggests that older adults perform better in history-dependent situations while younger adults perform better in history- independent situations. However, the precise neural and computational mechanisms associated with these age-based differences remain unclear. Additionally, virtually no research has examined how older adults respond to pressure despite its prevalence. Recent work suggests that normal aging is associated with declines in the neuromodulation of the frontostriatal limbic network associated with decision-making. Other work provides evidence for compensatory over- activation in brain regions, particularly lateral frontal brain regions, for older relative to younger adults in a variety of cognitive tasks. This over-activation is seen as compensatory for neural declines associated with aging and is known as the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (CRUNCH). We hypothesize that compensatory over-activation can account for the age-related advantage in history-dependent decision-making. In addition, compensation related frontal activity in older adults may follow an inverted U- shape as cognitive demand increases. With increased cognitive demand, under-activation in older adults, relative to younger adults might result when the "crunch" point is reached. Increased pressure in decision- making situations may force older adults to hit such a "crunch" point. The goal of this proposal is to examine the effects of aging on history-dependent and history-independent decision-making, and to systematically test predictions of the CRUNCH hypothesis as it applies to decision- making under pressure. Our research team is highly qualified to achieve these aims given our expertise in brain imaging, computational modeling, and behavioral studies of normal aging and pressure. We will apply models that assume qualitatively different strategies to the data and prediction errors from these models will be used as regressors with neural activity. We predict that older adults will show greater activation in DLPFC and LOFC, compared to younger adults under no pressure conditions but that older adults will show under- activation in these same regions under pressure conditions. Aims 1 and 2 examine the neurobiological underpinnings of age-related changes in history-dependent and history-independent decision-making. Aim 3 extends Aims 1 and 2 by examining decision-making under pressure.