Risk and Failure Found To Compete in Brain

That familiar attraction between the potential of winning and the dread of defeat is entrenched in the brain's architecture, according to a new imaging study.

Neuroscientists from the University of Southern California (USC) Brain and Creativity Institute (Los Angeles, USA) have identified distinct brain regions with competing responses to risk. Both regions are located in the prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead involved in analysis and planning. By giving volunteers a task that measures risk tolerance and observing their reactions with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that activity in one area identified risk-averse volunteers, whereas activity in a different region was greater in those with an appetite for risk. The study was published online October 8, 2008, in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

"We can see risk as a battle between two forces,” said Dr. Antoine Bechara, professor of psychology at USC. "There is always a lure of reward; there is always a fear of failure. These are the two forces that are always battling each other.”

In his earlier research, Dr. Bechara had used the same task to measure risk tolerance in brain-damaged patients. He and other researchers showed that the prefrontal cortex is critical for proper risk assessment. However, because brain lesions vary in every patient and affect multiple areas, lesion-based studies typically cannot pinpoint the role of the smaller brain regions.

Therefore, Dr. Bechara's group decided to repeat the experiment with fMRI. "We were interested in how normal people perform this task. What is going on in their brain?” asked first author Gui Xue, a postdoctoral research associate at the institute. Dr. Bechara called his group's study the first to outline an individual's risk profile in terms of the interaction between two brain regions.

Coauthor Dr. Zhong-Lin Lu, professor of psychology at USC, noted, "What this study has done is essentially localize two separate centers for the fear of risk and the lure of reward.”

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University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute