Bach, D.R.;
Seymour, B.;
Dolan, R.J.;
(2009)
Neural activity associated with the passive prediction of ambiguity and risk for aversive events.
Journal of Neuroscience
, 29
(6)
pp. 1648-1656.
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4578-08.2009.
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Abstract
In economic decision making, outcomes are described in terms of risk (uncertain outcomes with certain probabilities) and ambiguity (uncertain outcomes with uncertain probabilities). Humans are more averse to ambiguity than to risk, with a distinct neural system suggested as mediating this effect. However, there has been no clear disambiguation of activity related to decisions themselves from perceptual processing of ambiguity. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we contrasted ambiguity, defined as a lack of information about outcome probabilities, to risk, where outcome probabilities are known, or ignorance, where outcomes are completely unknown and unknowable.Wemodified previously learned pavlovian CSstimuli such that they became an ambiguous cue and contrasted evoked brain activity both with an unmodified predictive CS(risky cue), and a cue that conveyed no information about outcome probabilities (ignorance cue). Compared with risk, ambiguous cues elicited activity in posterior inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal cortex during outcome anticipation. Furthermore, a similar set of regions was activated when ambiguous cues were compared with ignorance cues. Thus, regions previously shown to be engaged by decisions about ambiguous rewarding outcomes are also engaged by ambiguous outcome prediction in the context of aversive outcomes. Moreover, activation in these regions was seen even when no actual decision is made. Our findings suggest that these regions subserve a general function of contextual analysis when search for hidden information during outcome anticipation is both necessary and meaningful.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Neural activity associated with the passive prediction of ambiguity and risk for aversive events |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4578-08.2009 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4578-08.2009 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2009 Society for Neuroscience. Article reproduced here for non-commercial purposes under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. For further information see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Update: 20.5.13 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The license allows you to copy, distribute, and transmit the work, as well as adapting it. However, you must attribute the work to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), and cannot use the work for commercial purposes without prior permission of the author. If you alter or build upon this work, you can distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. |
| Keywords: | Ambiguity, risk, uncertainty, probability distribution, probabilistic outcome prediction, pavlovian conditioning, fear conditioning, fMRI, BOLD |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/20072 |
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