中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

The dominant theories about risky decision-making assume that decision conflicts are solved by a compensatory process involving a trade-off of probability against payoff, but it is unclear whether these theories actually represent the events that occur when people make a risky decision. By contrasting a preferential choice with a judgment-based choice that required a compensatory process, we explored the mechanisms underlying risky decision-making. First, using parametric analyses, we identified the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) as the specific region in charge of task-related conflict in risky decision-making tasks. We also showed that the dMPFC was activated less when judgment-based choices were being made, implying that the conflict experienced during a judgment-based choice was not as strong as the conflict that was experienced during the preferential choice. Our results provide neural evidence that preferential choice cannot be characterized solely as a compensatory process. Thus, questions were raised about whether existing compensatory theories could adequately describe individual risky decisions.

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 70871110; 60675033; 30730035), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2011CB711000), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 20070420545), and the "Graduate Science and Social Practice Special Funding In'vative Research Program'' of CAS. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.