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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on October 1, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsm033
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© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Age-related differences in neural activities during risk taking as revealed by functional MRI

Tatia M. C. Lee1,2, Ada W. S. Leung1,3, Peter T. Fox4, Jia-Hong Gao5 and Chetwyn C. H. Chan3

1Laboratory of Neuropsychology, 2Laboratory of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, The University of Hong Kong, 3Laboratory of Applied Cognitive Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China, 4Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 5Department of Radiology, The University of Chicago, USA

Previous research has clearly documented that risky decision making is different in young and older adults. Yet, there has been a relative dearth of research that seeks to understand such age-related changes in the neural activities associated with risk taking. To address this research issue, 21 men (12 young men, mean age 29.9 ± 6.2 years and 9 older men, mean age 65.2 ± 4.2 years) performed a risky-gains task while their brain activities were monitored by an fMRI scanner. The older adults, relative to their younger peers, presented with contralateral prefrontal activity, particularly at the orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, stronger activation of the right insula was observed for the older-aged participants compared to the younger-aged adults. The findings of this study are consistent with the a priori speculations established in accordance with the HAROLD model as well as previous findings. Findings of this study suggest that when making risky decisions, there may be possible neuropsychological mechanisms underlying the change in impulsive and risk-taking behaviors during the course of natural ageing.

Keywords: risk taking; ageing; insula; orbitofrontal cortex; prefrontal cortex; neuroimaging

Correspondence should be addressed to Tatia M. C. Lee, K610, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China. E-mail: tmclee{at}hkusua.hku.hk

The project was supported by the University Development Fund (The University of Hong Kong).

Received April 25, 2007. Accepted August 24, 2007.


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