Brain activation covaries with reported criminal behaviors when making risky choices: A fuzzy-trace theory approach
Reyna, VF; Helm, RK; Shah, PD; et al.Turpin, AG; Govindgari, S
Date: 16 October 2018
Journal
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Criminal behavior has been associated with abnormal neural activity when people experience
risks and rewards or exercise inhibition. However, neural substrates of mental representations
that underlie criminal and noncriminal risk-taking in adulthood have received scant attention. We
take a new approach, applying fuzzy-trace theory, ...
Criminal behavior has been associated with abnormal neural activity when people experience
risks and rewards or exercise inhibition. However, neural substrates of mental representations
that underlie criminal and noncriminal risk-taking in adulthood have received scant attention. We
take a new approach, applying fuzzy-trace theory, to examine neural substrates of risk
preferences and criminality. We extend ideas about gist (simple meaning) and verbatim (precise
risk-reward tradeoffs) representations used to explain adolescent risk-taking to uncover neural
correlates of developmentally inappropriate adult risk-taking. We tested predictions using a
risky-choice framing task completed in the MRI scanner, and examined neural covariation with
self-reported criminal and noncriminal risk-taking. As predicted, risk-taking was correlated with
a behavioral pattern of risk preferences called “reverse framing” (preferring sure losses over a
risky option and a risky option over sure gains, the opposite of typical framing biases) that has
been linked to risky behavior in adolescents and is rarely observed in nondisordered adults.
Experimental manipulations confirmed processing interpretations of typical framing (gist-based)
and reverse-framing (verbatim-based) risk preferences. In the brain, covariation with criminal
and noncriminal risk-taking was observed predominantly when subjects made reverse-framing
choices. Noncriminal risk-taking behavior was associated with emotional reactivity (amygdala)
and reward motivation (striatal) areas, whereas criminal behavior was associated with greater
activation in temporal and parietal cortices, their junction, and insula. When subjects made more
developmentally typical framing choices, reflecting non-preferred gist processing, activation in
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex covaried with criminal risk-taking, which may reflect cognitive
effort to process gist while inhibiting preferred verbatim processing
Law School
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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