title: Investigation of decision-making under uncertainty in healthy subjects: a multi-centric fMRI study.
abstract: Decision-making is an everyday routine that entails several subprocesses. Decisions under uncertainty occur when either prior information is incomplete or the outcomes of the decision are unclear. The aim of the present study was to disentangle the neural correlates of information gathering as well as reaching a decision and to explore effects of uncertainty acceptance or avoidance in a large sample of healthy subjects. Sixty-four healthy volunteers performed a decision-making under uncertainty task in a multi-center approach while BOLD signal was measured with fMRI. Subjects either had to indicate via button press from which of two bottles red or blue balls were drawn (decision-making under uncertainty condition), or they had to indicate whether 8 red balls had been presented (baseline condition). During the information gathering phase (contrasted against the counting phase) a widespread network was found encompassing (pre-)frontal, inferior temporal and inferior parietal cortices. Reaching a decision was correlated with activations in the medial frontal cortex as well as the posterior cingulate and the precuneus. Effects of uncertainty acceptance were found within a network comprising of the superior frontal cortex as well as the insula and precuneus while uncertainty avoidance was correlated with activations in the right middle frontal cortex. The results depict two distinct networks for information gathering and the indication of having made a decision. While information-gathering networks are modulated by uncertainty avoidance and - acceptance, underlying networks of the decision itself are independent of these factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany. Electronic address: kruga@med.uni-marburg.de.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krug
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cabanis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pyka
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatic Medicine, Medical School, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pauly
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, Rhineland Friedrich Wilhelms University, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Landsberg
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Biophysics 3 - Medicine, Research Center Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: N Jon
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.affiliation: Cologne Center for Genomics, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Winterer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Heinrich Heine University, Rhineland State Clinics for Psychiatry, Düsseldorf, Germany.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wölwer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Heinrich Heine University, Rhineland State Clinics for Psychiatry, Düsseldorf, Germany.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Musso
authors.affiliation: LVR-Hospital Essen, Department for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
authors.forename: B W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Clinical Center, Fulda, Germany.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wiedemann
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Herrlich
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychiatry, University Hospital of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schnell
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany; Institute for Neurosciences and Medicine, Cognitive Neuroscience (INM3), Research Center Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vogeley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schilbach
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Langohr
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rapp
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Klingberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kircher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D035501:Uncertainty
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: ACC; Decision-making; Uncertainty; fMRI