This study investigated the neural correlates of the so-called affect heuristic, which refers to the phenomenon whereby individuals tend to rely on affective states rather than rational deliberation of utility and probabilities during judgments of risk and utility of a given event or scenario. The study sought to explore whether there are shared regional activations during both judgments of relative risk and relative benefit of various scenarios, thus being a potential candidate of the affect heuristic. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we developed a novel risk perception task, based on a preexisting behavioral task assessing the affect heuristic. A whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of a sample of participants (n = 42) during the risk and benefit conditions revealed overlapping clusters in the left insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left medial frontal gyrus across conditions. Extraction of parameter estimates of these clusters revealed that activity of these regions during both tasks was inversely correlated with a behavioral measure assessing the inclination to use the affect heuristic. More activity in these areas during risk judgments reflect individuals' ability to disregard momentary affective impulses. The insula may be involved in integrating viscero-somatosensory information and forming a representation of the current emotional state of the body, whereas activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and medial frontal gyrus indicates that executive processes may be involved in inhibiting the impulse of making judgments in favor of deliberate risk evaluations.

这项研究调查了所谓的情感启发式的神经相关性，这是指在判断给定事件或场景的风险和效用时，个体倾向于依赖情感状态而不是对效用和概率的理性审议的现象。该研究试图探索在对各种情景的相对风险和相对收益的判断过程中是否存在共享的区域激活，从而成为影响启发式的潜在候选者。使用功能磁共振成像，我们开发了一种新的风险感知任务，基于评估影响启发式的预先存在的行为任务。对参与者样本的全脑体素分析 ( n= 42) 在风险和收益条件下，在不同条件下，左脑岛、左下额回和左内侧额回中存在重叠的簇。提取这些集群的参数估计表明，这些区域在两项任务中的活动与评估使用影响启发式的倾向的行为测量呈负相关。在风险判断期间，这些领域的更多活动反映了个人忽视瞬间情感冲动的能力。脑岛可能参与整合内脏 - 体感信息并形成身体当前情绪状态的表示，