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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 8, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(5):1019-1027; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn147
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Functional Dissociations of Risk and Reward Processing in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Gui Xue1,2,3, Zhonglin Lu1,2,3, Irwin P. Levin4, Joshua A. Weller5, Xiangrui Li1,2,3 and Antoine Bechara1,2,3

1 Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA, 2 Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA, 3 Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA, 4 Department of Psychology; University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA, 5 Decision Research, Eugene, OR, USA

Address correspondence to Antoine Bechara, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA. Email: bechara{at}usc.edu.

Making a risky decision is a complex process that involves evaluation of both the value of the options and the associated risk level. Yet the neural processes underlying these processes have not so far been clearly identified. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a task that simulates risky decisions, we found that the dorsal region of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated whenever a risky decision was made, but the degree of this activity across subjects was negatively correlated with their risk preference. In contrast, the ventral MPFC was parametrically modulated by the received gain/loss, and the activation in this region was positively correlated with an individual's risk preference. These results extend existing neurological evidence by showing that the dorsal and ventral MPFC convey different decision signals (i.e., aversion to uncertainty vs. approach to rewarding outcomes), where the relative strengths of these signals determine behavioral decisions involving risk and uncertainty.

Key Words: decision making • fMRI • neuroeconomics • reward • risk


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