title: No evidence of risk-taking or impulsive behaviour in a person with episodic amnesia: Implications for the role of the hippocampus in future-regarding decision-making.
abstract: Does advantageous decision-making require one to explicitly remember the outcome of a series of past decisions or to imagine future personal consequences of one's choices? Findings that amnesic people with hippocampal damage cannot form a clear preference for advantageous decks over many learning trials on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) have been taken to suggest that complex decision-making on the IGT depends on declarative (episodic) memory and hippocampal integrity. Alternatively, impaired IGT performance in amnesic individuals could be secondary to risk-taking and/or impulsive behaviour resulting from impaired episodic future thinking (i.e. prospection) known to accompany amnesia. We tested this possibility in the amnesic individual K.C. using the IGT and the Toronto Gambling Task (TGT), a novel task that dissociates impulsivity from risk-taking without placing demands on declarative memory. K.C. did not develop a preference for advantageous over disadvantageous decks on the IGT and, instead, showed a slight preference for short-term gains and an inability to acquire a more adaptive appreciation of longer-term losses. He also did not display impulsive or risk-taking behaviour on the TGT, despite a profound inability to imagine personal future experiences. These findings suggest that impaired decision-making on the IGT in amnesia is unlikely to reflect a predilection to act in the moment or failure to take future consequences into account. Instead, some forms of future-regarding decision-making may be dissociable, with performance on tasks relying on declarative learning or on episodic-constructive processes more likely to be impaired.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , York University , Toronto , ON , Canada.|b Rotman Research Institute , Baycrest, Toronto , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Rosenbaum
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , York University , Toronto , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kwan
authors.affiliation: c Center for Neurological Restoration , Cleveland Clinic , Cleveland , OH , USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Floden
authors.affiliation: b Rotman Research Institute , Baycrest, Toronto , ON , Canada.|d Departments of Psychology and Medicine (Neurology) , University of Toronto , Toronto , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Levine
authors.affiliation: b Rotman Research Institute , Baycrest, Toronto , ON , Canada.|d Departments of Psychology and Medicine (Neurology) , University of Toronto , Toronto , ON , Canada.|e Ontario Brain Institute , Toronto , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: D T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Stuss
authors.affiliation: f Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology , Washington University , St. Louis , MO , USA.
authors.forename: C F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Craver
mesh_terms: D000647:Amnesia / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D012309:Risk-Taking
keywords: Case study; Episodic memory; Future imagining; Gambling test; Patient K.C