title: Decision-making deficits of korsakoff patients in a new gambling task with explicit rules: associations with executive functions.
abstract: Decision-making deficits reflected by risky decisions in gambling tasks have been associated with frontal lobe dysfunctions in various neurologic and psychiatric populations. The question remains whether decision-making impairments are related to executive functions. The authors developed a new gambling task, the Game of Dice Task, with explicit and stable rules for reinforcement and punishment, to investigate relations between executive functions and risk-taking behavior in an explicit decision-making situation. A sample of 35 alcoholic Korsakoff patients and 35 healthy controls was examined with the Game of Dice Task and a neuropsychological test battery. Results show that Korsakoff patients are strongly impaired in this explicit decision-making task and that these disturbances are correlated with specific executive functions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiological Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany. m.brand@unibielefeld.de
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brand
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fujiwara
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Borsutzky
authors.forename: Elke
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kalbe
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.forename: Hans J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Markowitsch
mesh_terms: D001244:Association; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling; D006801:Humans; D020915:Korsakoff Syndrome / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric