title: Impairments in an early stage of the decision-making process in patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage: preliminary results.
abstract: Lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex can result in a deficient decision-making behavior. So far, most experimental results in the neuropsychological decision-making research have been obtained with gambling tasks. Due to their high complexity, it is difficult to evaluate the underlying processes of the decision-making deficits. The aim of this study was to assess if patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage compared to patients with dorsolateral prefrontal damage and controls show a deficit in an early stage of the decision-making process. Nine patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage, three with dorsolateral prefrontal damage, and eleven healthy controls were tested with a newly developed decision task in which they had to search actively for the information they needed for their decisions. Our results show that patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage compared to the brain-lesioned dorsolateral prefrontal control group and healthy controls searched less for information with regard to risk defusing operators or consequences of their decisions indicating impairment already in the early stage of the decision-making process.
authors: a Neurological Rehabilitation Centre, Reha Rheinfelden , Rheinfelden Switzerland.
authors: Céline
authors: C
authors: Eggen
authors: Oswald
authors: O
authors: Huber
authors: Arlette
authors: A
authors: Bär
authors: Odilo W
authors: OW
authors: Huber
authors: Walter J
authors: WJ
authors: Perrig
authors: René
authors: R
authors: Müri
authors: Klemens
authors: K
authors: Gutbrod
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: decision-making; ventromedial prefrontal cortex