Wu Shuyi, Sun Sai, Camilleri Julia A, Eickhoff Simon B, Yu Rongjun
School of Psychology, Centre for Studies of Psychological Application and Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, P R China; Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
Neuroimage. 2021 Aug 1;236:118109. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118109. Epub 2021 Apr 30.
Risk and ambiguity are inherent in virtually all human decision-making. Risk refers to a situation in which we know the precise probability of potential outcomes of each option, whereas ambiguity refers to a situation in which outcome probabilities are not known. A large body of research has shown that individuals prefer known risks to ambiguity, a phenomenon known as ambiguity aversion. One heated debate concerns whether risky and ambiguous decisions rely on the same or distinct neural circuits. In the current meta-analyses, we integrated the results of neuroimaging research on decision-making under risk (n = 69) and ambiguity (n = 31). Our results showed that both processing of risk and ambiguity showed convergence in anterior insula, indicating a key role of anterior insula in encoding uncertainty. Risk additionally engaged dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and ventral striatum, whereas ambiguity specifically recruited the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and right anterior insula. Our findings demonstrate overlapping and distinct neural substrates underlying different types of uncertainty, guiding future neuroimaging research on risk-taking and ambiguity aversion.
风险和模糊性几乎存在于所有人类决策过程中。风险是指我们知道每个选项潜在结果的确切概率的情况，而模糊性是指结果概率未知的情况。大量研究表明，个体更喜欢已知风险而非模糊性，这一现象被称为模糊厌恶。一个激烈的争论焦点在于，有风险的决策和模糊决策是依赖相同还是不同的神经回路。在当前的荟萃分析中，我们整合了关于风险决策（n = 69）和模糊决策（n = 31）的神经影像学研究结果。我们的结果表明，风险处理和模糊性处理在前岛叶均表现出趋同性，表明前岛叶在编码不确定性方面起关键作用。风险处理还涉及背内侧前额叶皮质（dmPFC）和腹侧纹状体，而模糊性处理则特别激活了背外侧前额叶皮质（dlPFC）、顶下小叶（IPL）和右侧前岛叶。我们的研究结果揭示了不同类型不确定性背后重叠且不同的神经基础，为未来关于冒险和模糊厌恶的神经影像学研究提供了指导。
