While many publications have reported brain hemodynamic responses to decision-making under various conditions of risk, no inventory management scenarios, such as the newsvendor problem (NP), have been investigated in conjunction with neuroimaging. In this study, we hypothesized (I) that NP stimulates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) joined with frontal polar area (FPA) significantly in the human brain, and (II) that local brain network properties are increased when a person transits from rest to the NP decision-making phase. A 77-channel functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system with wide field-of-view (FOV) was employed to measure frontal cerebral hemodynamics in response to NP in 27 healthy human subjects. NP-induced changes in oxy-hemoglobin concentration, Δ[HbO], were investigated using a general linear model (GLM) and graph theory analysis (GTA). Significant activation induced by NP was shown in both DLPFC and OFC+FPA across all subjects. Specifically, higher risk NP with low-profit margins (LM) activated left-DLPFC but deactivated right-DLPFC in 14 subjects, while lower risk NP with high-profit margins (HM) stimulated both DLPFC and OFC+FPA in 13 subjects. The local efficiency, clustering coefficient, and path length of the network metrics were significantly enhanced under NP decision making. In summary, multi-channel fNIRS enabled us to identify DLPFC and OFC+FPA as key cortical regions of brain activations when subjects were making inventory-management risk decisions. We demonstrated that challenging NP resulted in the deactivation within right-DLPFC due to higher levels of stress. Also, local brain network properties were increased when a person transitioned from the rest phase to the NP decision-making phase.

中文翻译：

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人类前额叶皮层报童问题引起的脑血流动力学和网络特性的改变


尽管许多出版物报道了在各种风险条件下大脑血流动力学对决策的反应，但尚未结合神经影像学对库存管理场景（例如报童问题（NP））进行研究。在本研究中，我们假设 (I) NP 显着刺激人脑中的背外侧前额叶皮层 (DLPFC) 和与额极区 (FPA) 连接的眶额皮层 (OFC)，以及 (II) 局部脑网络特性当一个人从休息阶段过渡到 NP 决策阶段时，该值会增加。采用具有宽视场 (FOV) 的 77 通道功能性近红外光谱 (fNIRS) 系统来测量 27 名健康受试者对 NP 的额叶血流动力学。使用一般线性模型 (GLM) 和图论分析 (GTA) 研究了 NP 引起的氧合血红蛋白浓度 Δ[HbO] 的变化。所有受试者的 DLPFC 和 OFC+FPA 均显示出 NP 诱导的显着激活。具体而言，低利润率 (LM) 的高风险 NP 在 14 名受试者中激活左 DLPFC，但使右 DLPFC 失活，而高利润率 (HM) 的低风险 NP 刺激 13 名受试者的 DLPFC 和 OFC+FPA。在 NP 决策下，网络度量的局部效率、聚类系数和路径长度显着增强。总之，多通道 fNIRS 使我们能够在受试者做出库存管理风险决策时将 DLPFC 和 OFC+FPA 识别为大脑激活的关键皮质区域。我们证明，由于压力水平较高，具有挑战性的 NP 会导致右 DLPFC 失活。 此外，当一个人从休息阶段过渡到 NP 决策阶段时，局部大脑网络特性也会增加。