scholarly journals Mechanisms of impulsive choice: I. Individual differences in interval timing and reward processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Marshall ◽  
Aaron P. Smith ◽  
Kimberly Kirkpatrick
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Daniel ◽  
Brenda G. Rushing ◽  
Karla Y. Tapia Menchaca

AbstractUnderstanding the emotional reaction to loss, or frustration, is a critical problem for the field of mental health. Animal models of loss have pointed to the opioid system as a nexus of frustration, physical pain, and substance abuse. However, few attempts have been made to connect the results of animal models of loss to human behavior. Allelic differences in the human mu opioid receptor gene, notably the A118G single nucleotide polymorphism, have been linked to individual differences in pain sensitivity, depressive symptoms, and reward processing. The present study explored the relationship between A118G and behavior in two frustrating tasks in humans. Results showed that carriers of the mutant G-allele were slower to recover behavior following a reward downshift and abandoned a frustrating task earlier than those without the mutation. Additionally, G-carriers were more sensitive to physical pain. These results highlight the overlap between frustration and pain, and suggest that genetic variation in opioid tone may contribute to individual differences in vulnerability and resilience following emotional disturbances.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Andrews ◽  
Jonathon Dunn ◽  
Daniel Nettle ◽  
Melissa Bateson

AbstractImpulsivity, in the sense of the extent rewards are devalued as the time until their realization increases, is linked to various negative outcomes in humans, yet understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying it is limited. Variation in the imprecision of interval timing is a possible contributor to variation in impulsivity. We use a numerical model to generate predictions concerning the effect of timing imprecision on impulsivity. We distinguish between fixed imprecision (the imprecision that applies even when timing the very shortest time intervals) and proportional imprecision (the rate at which imprecision increases as the interval becomes longer). The model predicts that impulsivity should increase with increasing fixed imprecision, but decrease with increasing proportional imprecision. We present data from a cohort of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris, n = 28) in which impulsivity had previously been measured through an intertemporal choice paradigm. We tested interval timing imprecision in the same individuals using a tri-peak temporal reproduction procedure. We found repeatable individual differences in both fixed and proportional imprecision. As predicted, birds with greater proportional imprecision in interval timing made fewer impulsive choices, whilst those with greater fixed imprecision tended to make more. Contradictory observations in the literature regarding the direction of association between timing imprecision and impulsivity might be clarified by distinguishing between fixed and proportional components of imprecision.


Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Peterson ◽  
Catherine C. Hill ◽  
Andrew T. Marshall ◽  
Sarah L. Stuebing ◽  
Kimberly Kirkpatrick

AbstractImpulsive choice behavior occurs when individuals make choices without regard for future consequences. This behavior is often maladaptive and is a common symptom in many disorders, including drug abuse, compulsive gambling, and obesity. Several proposed mechanisms may influence impulsive choice behavior. These mechanisms provide a variety of pathways that may provide the basis for individual differences that are often evident when measuring choice behavior. This review provides an overview of these different pathways to impulsive choice, and the behavioral intervention strategies being developed to moderate impulsive choice. Because of the compelling link between impulsive choice behavior and the near-epidemic pervasiveness of obesity in the United States, we focus on the relationship between impulsive choice behavior and obesity as a test case for application of the multiple pathways approach. Choosing immediate gratification over healthier long term food choices is a contributing factor to the obesity crisis. Behavioral interventions can lead to more self-controlled choices in a rat pre-clinical model, suggesting a possible gateway for translation to human populations. Designing and implementing effective impulsive choice interventions is crucial to improving the overall health and well-being of impulsive individuals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pragathi Priyadharsini Balasubramani ◽  
Juan Diaz-Delgado ◽  
Gillian Grennan ◽  
Mariam Zafar-Khan ◽  
Fahad Alim ◽  
...  

Humans make choices based on both reward magnitude and reward frequency. Probabilistic decision making is popularly tested using multi-choice gambling paradigms that require participants to maximize task payoff. However, research shows that performance in such paradigms suffers from individual bias towards the frequency of gains as well as individual differences that mediate reinforcement learning, including attention to stimuli, sensitivity to rewards and risks, learning rate, and exploration vs. exploitation based executive policies. Here, we developed a two-choice reward task, implemented in 186 healthy human subjects across the adult lifespan, to understand the cognitive and neural basis of payoff-based performance. We controlled for individual gain frequency biases using experimental block manipulations and modeled individual differences in reinforcement learning parameters. Simultaneously recorded electroencephalography (EEG)-based cortical activations showed that diminished theta activity in the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as diminished beta activity in the right parsorbitalis region of the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) during cumulative reward presentation correspond to better payoff performance. These neural activations further associated with specific symptom self-reports for depression (greater ACC theta) and inattention (greater IFC beta), suggestive of reward processing markers of clinical utility.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica D. Rosenberg ◽  
Steven A. Martinez ◽  
Kristina M. Rapuano ◽  
May I. Conley ◽  
Alexandra O. Cohen ◽  
...  

AbstractWorking memory function changes across development and varies across individuals. The patterns of behavior and brain function that track individual differences in working memory during development, however, are not well understood. Here we establish associations between working memory, cognitive abilities, and functional MRI activation in data from over 4,000 9–10-year-olds enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, an ongoing longitudinal study in the United States. Behavioral analyses reveal robust relationships between working memory, short-term memory, language skills, and fluid intelligence. Analyses relating out-of-scanner working memory performance to memory-related fMRI activation in an emotional n-back task demonstrate that frontoparietal activity in response to an explicit memory challenge indexes working memory ability. Furthermore, this relationship is domain-specific, such that fMRI activation related to emotion processing during the emotional n-back task, inhibitory control during a stop-signal task, and reward processing during a monetary incentive delay task does not track memory abilities. Together these results inform our understanding of the emergence of individual differences in working memory and lay the groundwork for characterizing the ways in which they change across adolescence.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I Demidenko ◽  
Edward Huntley ◽  
Alexander Samuel Weigard ◽  
Daniel Keating ◽  
Adriene M. Beltz

Adolescent risk-taking, including sensation seeking (SS), is often attributed to developmental changes in connectivity among brain regions implicated in cognitive control and reward processing. Despite considerable scientific and popular interest in this neurodevelopmental framework, there are few empirical investigations of adolescent network connectivity–let alone examinations of its links to SS behavior. The studies that have been done focus on mean-based approaches and leave unanswered questions about individual differences in neurodevelopment and behavior. The goal of this paper is to take a person-specific approach to the study of adolescent functional connectivity during reward processing, and to examine links between connectivity and self-reported SS behavior in 104 adolescents (MAge=19.3; SDAge=1.3). Using group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME), person-specific connectivity during two neuroimaging runs of a monetary incentive delay task was estimated among 12 a priori brain regions of interest representing reward, cognitive, and salience networks. Two data-driven subgroups were detected, a finding that was consistent between both neuroimaging runs, but associations with SS were only found in the first run, potentially reflecting neural habituation in the second run. Specifically, the subgroup that had unique connections between reward-related regions had greater SS and showed a distinctive relation between connectivity strength in the reward network and SS. These findings provide novel evidence for heterogeneity in adolescent brain-behavior relations by showing that subsets of adolescents have unique associations between neural reward processing and SS. Findings have broader implications for future work on reward processing, as they demonstrate that brain-behavior relations may attenuate across runs.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Galtress ◽  
Angela Crumer ◽  
Ana Garcia ◽  
Kimberly Kirkpatrick

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