中国科学院心理研究所机构知识库

In our daily life, it is very common to make decisions in uncertain situations. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has been widely used in laboratory studies because of its good simulation of uncertainty in real life activities. The present study aimed to examine the neural correlates of uncertain decision making with the IGT. Twenty-six university students completed this study. An adapted IGT was administered to them, and the EEG data were recorded. The adapted IGT we used allowed us to analyze the choice evaluation, response selection, and feedback evaluation stages of uncertain decision making within the same paradigm. In the choice evaluation stage, the advantageous decks evoked larger P3 amplitude in the left hemisphere, while the disadvantageous decks evoked larger P3 in the right hemisphere. In the response selection stage, the response of "pass" (the card was not turned over; the participants neither won nor lost money) evoked larger negativity preceding the response compared to that of "play" (the card was turned over; the participant either won or lost money). In the feedback evaluation stage, feedback-related negativity (FRN) was only sensitive to the valence (win/loss) but not the magnitude (large/small) of the out come, and P3 was sensitive to both the valence and the magnitude of the out come. These results were consistent with the notion that a positive somatic state was represented in the left hemisphere and a negative somatic state was represented in the right hemisphere. There were also anticipatory ERP effects that guided the participants' responses and provided evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis with more precise timing.

This study was supported by grants from the Young Investigator Scientific Fund of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (O9CX073007), the National Key Technologies R&D Program (2012BAI36B01), the National Science Foundation of China (30900403, 81088001 91132701, and 31271106), Youth Innovation Promotion Association Funding of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y1CX131003), Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Programme for Creative Research Teams (Y2CX131003), the major projects of the Ministry of Education SOCIAL base (12JJD190001), the Beijing Social Science Foundation (12JYA003), and Endeavour Fellowship of Australian government. The funding agents had no further role in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to submit the paper for publication.