Abstract

Human decisions are often influenced by emotions. An economically relevant example is the role of fear in generating loss aversion. Previous research implicates the amygdala as a key brain structure in the experience of fear and loss aversion. The neural mechanism behind emotional influences on loss aversion is, however, unclear. To address this, we measured brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants made decisions about monetary gambles after viewing fearful or neutral faces. We observed that loss aversion following the presentation of neutral faces was mainly predicted by greater deactivations for prospective losses (relative to activations for prospective gains) in several brain regions, including the amygdala. By contrast, increases in loss aversion following the presentation of fearful faces were mainly predicted by greater activations for prospective losses. These findings suggest a fear-induced shift from positive to negative value coding that reflects a context-dependent involvement of distinct valuation processes.

中文翻译：

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健康神经科学 2.0：与社会、认知和情感神经科学的整合。

 抽象的

人类的决定常常受到情绪的影响。一个与经济相关的例子是恐惧在产生损失厌恶方面的作用。先前的研究表明杏仁核是恐惧和损失厌恶体验中的关键大脑结构。然而，情绪影响损失厌恶背后的神经机制尚不清楚。为了解决这个问题，我们利用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量了参与者在看到恐惧或中性面孔后做出关于金钱赌博的决定时的大脑激活情况。我们观察到，出现中性面孔后的损失厌恶主要是通过包括杏仁核在内的几个大脑区域对预期损失的更大程度的失活（相对于预期收益的激活）来预测的。相比之下，出现恐惧面孔后损失厌恶的增加主要是通过对预期损失的更大激活来预测的。这些发现表明，恐惧引起的从正价值编码到负价值编码的转变，反映了不同评估过程的上下文相关参与。