Distinctive neural substrates of low and high risky decision making: Evidence from the Balloon Analog Risk Task

Human beings exhibit varying risk-taking behaviors in response to different risk levels. Despite numerous studies on risk-taking in decision-making, the neural mechanisms of decision-making regarding risk levels remains unclear. To investigate the neural correlates of individual differences in risk-taking under different risk-levels, we analyzed behavioral data of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI) data of healthy participants (22–39 years, N = 93) from the University of California, Los Angeles Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics dataset. In the BART, the participants decided to pump for more points or stop pumping to avoid explosion of the balloons, where the risk level was manipulated by the explosion likelihood which was distinguished by the balloon color (blue for low-, red for high- risk condition). Compared with low-risk condition, the participants pumped less number, exploded more balloons, and showed more variability in pump numbers in high-risk condition, demonstrating the effective manipulation of the risky level. Next, resting state features and functional connectivity (rsFC) strength were associated with behavioral measures in low- and high-risk conditions. We found that the explosion number of balloons were correlated with the low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L. DLPFC), the rsFC strength between L. DLPFC and the left anterior orbital gyrus in the low-risk condition. In the high-risk condition, we found variability in pump numbers was correlated with the ALFF in the left middle/superior frontal gyrus, the fractional ALFF (fALFF) in the medial segment of precentral gyrus (M. PrG), and the rsFC strength between the M. PrG and bilateral precentral gyrus. Our results highlighted significance of the L. DLPFC in lower risky decision making and the precentral gyrus in higher risky decision making, suggesting that distinctive neural correlates underlie the individual differences of decision-making under different risk level.