A gut feeling: how your gut and brain changes your risk and time preferences

Abstract Recent research has shown that the gut microbiota can influence the interaction between the central and the enteric nervous systems via the gut-brain axis (GBA). Animal models and human neuroimaging studies have revealed that changes in the gut microbiota affect neural activity in brain regions linked to basic emotional and cognitive processes. Whether the gut microbiota also affect human decision-making and, more specifically, risk and time preferences, however, remains largely unknown. Here, we examine the role of the gut-brain axis in decision-making in the face of risk and intertemporal choices. In a placebo-controlled double-blinded design, with two sessions separated by 28 days, during which participants received daily doses of probiotics (or a placebo), we investigate whether the prolonged and controlled intake of probiotics affects risk-taking behavior and intertemporal choices using incentivised economic tasks. We found a significant decrease in risk-taking behavior and an increase in future-oriented choices in the probiotics group as compared to the placebo group. These findings provided the first direct experimental evidence suggesting a potential functional role on the part of the microbiota-gut-brain axis in decision-making, creating a path for potential clinical applications and allowing for a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms of risk-taking behavior and intertemporal choices.

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Sexual Coercion in the College Population: A Form of Risk-Taking Behavior

Journal of Interpersonal Violence ◽

10.1177/0886260517720736 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 35 (23-24) ◽

pp. 5276-5291

Author(s):

Alisa R. Garner ◽

Laura C. Spiller ◽

Patrick Williams

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Sexual Coercion ◽

Sensation Seeking ◽

Outcome Expectation ◽

College Population ◽

Risk Taking Behavior ◽

Reckless Behavior ◽

Decision Making Model ◽

The Relationship

The purpose of this study was to examine whether a decision-making model of risk-taking behavior, specifically impulsivity, positive and negative outcome expectation, and sensation seeking, can be extended to motivation for perpetration of sexual coercion. Participants included 276 sexually active college students between the ages of 18 and 25 years old who completed a set of questionnaires: (a) Sexual Experiences Survey, (b) Sensation Seeking Scales, (c) Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events, (d) Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, and (e) Reckless Behavior Questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses were utilized to examine the relationship between these decision-making models and sexually coercive behaviors. General risk-taking behaviors were positively correlated with acts of sexual coercion, r = .16, p < .01. The predictor variables accounted for a significant amount of the variance in sexual coercion, R2 = .11, F(4, 246) = 7.57, p < .01. Only sensation seeking contributed unique variance to our model of sexual coercion, β = .27, t = 4.06, p < .01. Interventions to reduce sexual coercion may be more successful if they target those high in risk-taking. Similarly, prevention efforts informed by research on how to engage and hold the attention of sensation seeking youth may be more successful.

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Modernizing Conceptions of Valuation and Cognitive-Control Deployment in Adolescent Risk Taking

Current Directions in Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0963721419887361 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 102-109 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kathy T. Do ◽

Paul B. Sharp ◽

Eva H. Telzer

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Control System ◽

Cognitive Control ◽

Computational Model ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Expected Value ◽

Risky Decision Making ◽

Risky Decision ◽

Adolescent Risk ◽

Risk Taking Behavior

Heightened risk taking in adolescence has long been attributed to valuation systems overwhelming the deployment of cognitive control. However, this explanation of why adolescents engage in risk taking is insufficient given increasing evidence that risk-taking behavior can be strategic and involve elevated cognitive control. We argue that applying the expected-value-of-control computational model to adolescent risk taking can clarify under what conditions control is elevated or diminished during risky decision-making. Through this lens, we review research examining when adolescent risk taking might be due to—rather than a failure of—effective cognitive control and suggest compelling ways to test such hypotheses. This effort can resolve when risk taking arises from an immaturity of the control system itself, as opposed to arising from differences in what adolescents value relative to adults. It can also identify promising avenues for channeling cognitive control toward adaptive outcomes in adolescence.

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Governing with Clean Hands: Automated Public Toilets and Sanitary Surveillance

Surveillance & Society ◽

10.24908/ss.v8i1.3471 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 1-27 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Irus Braverman

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Public Space ◽

Urban Spaces ◽

Good News ◽

American City ◽

Urban Decay ◽

The Face ◽

Human Decision ◽

American Cities ◽

Public Toilets

To anyone familiar with the story of urban decay in major American cities in the 1980s – and with the subsequent abolition of toilets from city streets – the introduction of automated public toilets (APTs) to urban spaces sounds like very good news. This article explores the re-democratizing message that commonly accompanies the introduction of APTs to North American city streets as well as their on-the-ground manifestations. It focuses on two major components of APTs: privatization and automation. The process of privatization, which characterizes most APT operations in North America, carries with it various exclusionary effects that stand in stark contrast to the democratic aspirations of public space. Additionally, the APTs normally feature automated devices, and, most prominently, the auto-flush and the automated faucet and dryer. On the face of things, these devices eradicate the injustices that sometimes accompany human discretion. However, they also conceal the necessarily social and value-ridden human decision making that goes into their design. The article proposes that both the privatization and the automation of public toilets are part of a broader and increasingly expansive sanitary regime, one that imposes a morality in practice on its users. The latter are left with relatively limited options as to how to use the space of the washroom and at times join the nonhuman devices themselves in “kicking-back” at their programmers. By comparing automated toilets with attendant-based ones, the article suggests that the project of sanitary surveillance exemplifies the fluidity between traditional and new forms of surveillance.

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Human Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex Is Recruited During Experience of Imagined and Real Rewards

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.01030.2009 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 103 (5) ◽

pp. 2506-2512 ◽

Cited By ~ 63

Author(s):

Signe Bray ◽

Shinsuke Shimojo ◽

John P. O'Doherty

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽

Critical Role ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Mental Simulation ◽

Human Decision ◽

Tangible Rewards ◽

Action Choice

Human decision-making frequently relies on mental simulation of future rewards to guide action choice. In this study, we sought to uncover brain regions engaged during reward imagery and to address whether these regions functionally overlap with regions activated by tangible rewards. We found that medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) is engaged both for real and imagined rewards and is preferentially engaged for imagery with rewarding content compared with other nonrewarding imagery. These findings support a critical role for mOFC in the representation of rewarding goal states, even if hypothetical.

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Accumulation of continuously time-varying sensory evidence constrains neural and behavioral responses in human collision threat detection

PLoS Computational Biology ◽

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009096 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (7) ◽

pp. e1009096

Author(s):

Gustav Markkula ◽

Zeynep Uludağ ◽

Richard McGilchrist Wilkie ◽

Jac Billington

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Threat Detection ◽

Time Varying ◽

Evidence Accumulation ◽

Human Decision ◽

Detection Response ◽

Sensory Evidence ◽

Successful Behavior

Evidence accumulation models provide a dominant account of human decision-making, and have been particularly successful at explaining behavioral and neural data in laboratory paradigms using abstract, stationary stimuli. It has been proposed, but with limited in-depth investigation so far, that similar decision-making mechanisms are involved in tasks of a more embodied nature, such as movement and locomotion, by directly accumulating externally measurable sensory quantities of which the precise, typically continuously time-varying, magnitudes are important for successful behavior. Here, we leverage collision threat detection as a task which is ecologically relevant in this sense, but which can also be rigorously observed and modelled in a laboratory setting. Conventionally, it is assumed that humans are limited in this task by a perceptual threshold on the optical expansion rate–the visual looming–of the obstacle. Using concurrent recordings of EEG and behavioral responses, we disprove this conventional assumption, and instead provide strong evidence that humans detect collision threats by accumulating the continuously time-varying visual looming signal. Generalizing existing accumulator model assumptions from stationary to time-varying sensory evidence, we show that our model accounts for previously unexplained empirical observations and full distributions of detection response. We replicate a pre-response centroparietal positivity (CPP) in scalp potentials, which has previously been found to correlate with accumulated decision evidence. In contrast with these existing findings, we show that our model is capable of predicting the onset of the CPP signature rather than its buildup, suggesting that neural evidence accumulation is implemented differently, possibly in distinct brain regions, in collision detection compared to previously studied paradigms.

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Revisiting the Neural Architecture of Decision-Making: Univariate and Multivariate Evidence for System-Based Models in Adolescence

10.1101/2020.11.26.400416 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

João F. Guassi Moreira ◽

Adriana S. Méndez Leal ◽

Yael H. Waizman ◽

Natalie Saragosa-Harris ◽

Emilia Ninova ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Cognitive Control ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Neural Activity ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Risky Decision ◽

Human Decision ◽

Within Subjects ◽

Multivariate Pattern

AbstractSystem-based theories are a popular approach to explaining the psychology of human decision making. Such theories posit that decision-making is governed by interactions between different psychological processes that arbitrate amongst each other for control over behavior. To date, system-based theories have received inconsistent support at the neural level, leading some to question their veracity. Here we examine the possibility that prior attempts to evaluate system-based theories have been limited by their reliance on predicting brain activity from behavior, and seek to advance evaluations of system-based models through modeling approaches that predict behavior from brain activity. Using within-subject decision-level modeling of fMRI data from a risk-taking task in a sample of over 2000 decisions across 51 adolescents—a population in which decision-making processes are particularly dynamic and consequential—we find support for system-based theories of decision-making. In particular, neural activity in lateral prefrontal cortex and a multivariate pattern of cognitive control both predicted a reduced likelihood of making a risky decision, whereas increased activity in the ventral striatum—a region typically associated with valuation processes—predicted a greater likelihood of engaging in risk-taking. These results comprise the first formalized within-subjects neuroimaging test of system-based theories, garnering support for the notion that competing systems drive decision behaviors.Significance StatementDecision making is central to adaptive behavior. While dominant psychological theories of decision-making behavior have found empirical support, their neuroscientific implementations have received inconsistent support. This may in part be due to statistical approaches employed by prior neuroimaging studies of system-based theories. Here we use brain modeling—an approach that predicts behavior from brain activity—of univariate and multivariate neural activity metrics to better understand how neural components of psychological systems guide decision behavior. We found broad support for system-based theories such that that neural systems involved in cognitive control predicted a reduced likelihood to make risky decisions, whereas value-based systems predicted greater risk-taking propensity.

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What Difference Does it Make? Risk-Taking Behavior in Obesity after a Loss is Associated with Decreased Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity

Journal of Clinical Medicine ◽

10.3390/jcm8101551 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (10) ◽

pp. 1551 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Trevor Steward ◽

Asier Juaneda-Seguí ◽

Gemma Mestre-Bach ◽

Ignacio Martínez-Zalacaín ◽

Nuria Vilarrasa ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Sensation Seeking ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Control Group ◽

Adult Women ◽

Healthy Weight ◽

Risky Choices ◽

Risk Taking Behavior

Altered activity in decision-making neural circuitry may underlie the maladaptive food choices found in obesity. Here, we aimed to identify the brain regions purportedly underpinning risk-taking behavior in individuals with obesity. Twenty-three adult women with obesity and twenty-three healthy weight controls completed the Risky Gains Task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This task allows participants to choose between a safe option for a small, guaranteed monetary reward and risky options with larger rewards. fMRI analyses comparing losing trials to winning trials found that participants with obesity presented decreased activity in the left anterior insula in comparison to controls (p < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Moreover, left insula activation during losses vs. wins was negatively correlated with UPPS-P questionnaire sensation seeking scores. During safe vs. risky trials following a loss, the control group exhibited increased activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) (p < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected) in comparison to the OB group. Moreover, vmPFC response in the obesity group during post-loss trials was negatively correlated with risky choices on the task overall. As a whole, our findings support that diminished tuning of the insula towards interoceptive signals may lead to a lack of input to the vmPFC when weighing the costs and benefits of risky choices.

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Decision-making Styles of CSU College Deans: A Case of Managerial Ethics

IAMURE International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research ◽

10.7718/iamure.v6i1.662 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

LORAINE SUYU TATTAO

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Middle Managers ◽

Interpersonal Relationship ◽

Faculty Members ◽

Managerial Ethics ◽

Interview Guide ◽

Risk Taking Behavior ◽

Organizational Results ◽

Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

The decision-making style of Cagayan State University’s middle managers (college deans) is crucial in the process of its development. Thus, this study investigated the decision-making style of the deans and the managerial ethics using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study included 15 college deans and 229 faculty members. It utilized standardized and self-made questionnaires and interview guide. Results showed that the majority of the deans displayed moderate risk-taking behavior and normative decision-making style. They displayed high risk-taking behavior in loading and promotion; they used thinker decision-making style and beneficence as managerial ethics. The position of the deans is situated in such a way that there is pressure from above (from top management) and from below (subordinates). They are caught in a dilemma on how to bring organizational results or show loyalty to the top officials who designated them and one hand, how to maintain smooth interpersonal relationship with their subordinates.Keywords: Social Science, decision-making style, risk-taking behavior, beneficence, quantitative and qualitative method, Philippines

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