Resting-state functional connectivity predicts impulsivity in economic decision-making.

Increasing neuroimaging evidence suggests an association between impulsive decision-making behavior and task-related brain activity. However, the relationship between impulsivity in decision-making and resting-state brain activity remains unknown. To address this issue, we used functional MRI to record brain activity from human adults during a resting state and during a delay discounting task (DDT) that requires choosing between an immediate smaller reward and a larger delayed reward. In experiment I, we identified four DDT-related brain networks. The money network (the striatum, posterior cingulate cortex, etc.) and the time network (the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, etc.) were associated with the valuation process; the frontoparietal network and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-anterior insular cortex network were related to the choice process. Moreover, we found that the resting-state functional connectivity of the brain regions in these networks was significantly correlated with participants' discounting rate, a behavioral index of impulsivity during the DDT. In experiment II, we tested an independent group of subjects and demonstrated that this resting-state functional connectivity was able to predict individuals' discounting rates. Together, these findings suggest that resting-state functional organization of the human brain may be a biomarker of impulsivity and can predict economic decision-making behavior.

Citation

Nan Li, Ning Ma, Ying Liu, Xiao-Song He, De-Lin Sun, Xian-Ming Fu, Xiaochu Zhang, Shihui Han, Da-Ren Zhang. Resting-state functional connectivity predicts impulsivity in economic decision-making. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. 2013 Mar 13;33(11):4886-95

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PMID: 23486959

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