The neural substrates of risky rewards and losses in healthy volunteers and patient groups: a PET imaging study

Background Risk is an essential trait of most daily decisions. Our behaviour when faced with risks involves evaluation of many factors including the outcome probabilities, the valence (gains or losses) and past experiences. Several psychiatric disorders belonging to distinct diagnostic categories, including pathological gambling and addiction, show pathological risk-taking and implicate abnormal dopaminergic, opioidergic and serotonergic neurotransmission. In this study, we adopted a transdiagnostic approach to delineate the neurochemical substrates of decision making under risk. Methods We recruited 39 participants, including 17 healthy controls, 15 patients with pathological gambling and seven binge eating disorder patients, who completed an anticipatory risk-taking task. Separately, participants underwent positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with three ligands, [18F]fluorodopa (FDOPA), [11C]MADAM and [11C]carfentanil to assess presynaptic dopamine synthesis capacity and serotonin transporter and mu-opioid receptor binding respectively. Results Risk-taking behaviour when faced with gains positively correlated with dorsal cingulate [11C]carfentanil binding and risk-taking to losses positively correlated with [11C]MADAM binding in the caudate and putamen across all subjects. Conclusions We show distinct neurochemical substrates underlying risk-taking with the dorsal cingulate cortex mu-opioid receptor binding associated with rewards and dorsal striatal serotonin transporter binding associated with losses. Risk-taking and goal-directed control appear to dissociate between dorsal and ventral fronto-striatal systems. Our findings thus highlight the potential role of pharmacological agents or neuromodulation on modifying valence-specific risk-taking biases.