Positive Bias in Value-Based Decision Making: Neurocognitive Mechanisms Mediating Links to Resilience

Biased information processing plays an important role in mental disorders. This study investigates choice biases in value-based decision making and how links to psychological resilience can be accounted for by individual differences in cognitive and neural processing of reward and punishment signals. In a cost-benefit integration task, 82 participants (41 female, 41 male human subjects) weighed gains and losses associated with different features (color, shape) of compound visual stimuli. A positive choice bias in decision making was associated with trait acceptance as a facet of self-reported resilience – and this association was mediated by differences in the neural processing of value information as measured with fMRI: Participants with a more positive choice bias and higher trait acceptance showed stronger increases in neural activity in response to negative information (loss) in ten prefrontal and parietal brain regions – and stronger decreases in response to positive information (gain) in the right inferior frontal junction. Cognitive-computational modeling revealed that more positive choice biases were associated with lower sensitivity to and valuation of negative relative to positive information. Notably, higher valuation of positive information was associated with stronger neural responses to negative information in dACC and insula. Finally, choice bias and trait acceptance were associated with functional connectivity between prefrontal seeds, midbrain, striatum, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The stronger activation of brain regions associated with cognitive control, specifically in response to negative information, may reflect a stronger regulatory influence on the processing of negative information, potentially promoting a positive choice bias that supports resilience.