Elsevier

Brain Research Bulletin

Volume 67, Issue 5, 15 November 2005, Pages 403-412
Brain Research Bulletin

Variants of uncertainty in decision-making and their neural correlates

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2005.06.011Get rights and content

Abstract

When leaving the tidy world of rules and people start judging probabilities on an intuitive basis, it revealed that they have some intuitions to choose from. One could refer to them as a family of subjective probability concepts or following Kahneman and Tversky, as variants of uncertainty. The authors distinguished between external and internal attributions of uncertainty and could show that the perceived reason of uncertainty determines the selected coping strategy. To investigate whether variants of uncertainty can also be distinguished on the cerebral level, two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies were conducted. Participants had to predict events (abstract visual stimuli) under parametrically varying degrees of (un-)certainty. In the first experiment, uncertainty was induced by the manipulation of event probability (externally attributed uncertainty). In the second experiment, uncertainty depended on participants’ knowledge of valid rules of event occurrence, as trained before the experimental session (internally attributed uncertainty). As a result, parametric analyses revealed that activation within the posterior fronto-median cortex, particularly within mesial Brodmann area (BA) 8, increased with increasing uncertainty, no matter for which reason uncertainty emerged. Furthermore, it was found that different variants of uncertainty entailing different coping strategies can be dissociated due to additionally activated networks. Concluding, increasing activation within mesial BA 8 reflects that we are uncertain, additional networks what we do to resolve uncertainty in order to achieve future rewards. Hence, the phenomenological distinction between processes related to externally and internally attributed uncertainty is paralleled on the cerebral level.

Introduction

Interest in understanding the neurobiological mechanisms by which decisions are made has grown just recently. Such different disciplines like economics, psychology and neuroscience joint together in order to attempt a unified explanation of decision-making [23]. Yet, at that time, we are far away from providing a single general theory of human decision-making. But incorporating and bringing together the findings from the different disciplines concerning different aspects of decision-making will help in understanding the big picture. To keep in view with this aim, the present study deals with one aspect of decision-making, namely with the cerebral correlates of processes related to different variants of uncertainty.

In decision-making, it is rather important to anticipate consequences associated with different options or actions in order to decide favorably. However, there are events and circumstances in life that influence the outcome of decisions therewith making decisions uncertain. Uncertainty-causing events can be externally originating in the social and natural environment as well as internally originating within the individual. Kahneman and Tversky [30] discriminated variants of uncertainty subject to the perceived cause of uncertainty, i.e., externally attributed uncertainty and internally attributed uncertainty. The authors sub-divided the former into uncertainty based on frequencies and uncertainty based on propensities, the latter into uncertainty based on arguments and uncertainty based on introspective confidence, i.e., knowledge. Kahneman and Tversky [30] could show that the perceived cause of uncertainty is reflected in the way subjects try to resolve their uncertainty. A prominent coping strategy with uncertainty of frequency is to try to rate the probability of external events (e.g., “there is a 60% chance for rain tomorrow”). In contrast, a successful coping strategy with uncertainty of knowledge is an intensive memory search, most likely in combination with the attempt to get missing information from valid external sources (e.g., “I am quit sure that possums are mammals, but I do not know exactly”). That way, strategic processes are taken to reflect the respective variant of uncertainty. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the brain may serve as an external criterion to test whether the phenomenological distinction drawn by Kahneman and Tversky [30] and several other researchers (e.g., [4], [28], [48]) is paralleled on the cerebral level.

Accordingly, by using fMRI, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates of processes related to externally attributed uncertainty in Experiment 1 (Exp. 1) and processes related to internally attributed uncertainty in Experiment 2 (Exp. 2) and beyond in as much the latter differ from those induced by externally attributed uncertainty. To reliably detect areas systematically varying with the level of the respective variant of uncertainty, we induced different degrees of uncertainty in the respective experiment, i.e., a parametric manipulation.

To date, there is a great number of studies investigating brain activations induced by uncertainty-related paradigms including rule induction and application [24], inductive reasoning [25], hypotheses testing [12], anticipation of monetary gains and losses [3], [32], response conflict (e.g., [50]), dynamical motion predictions [50] or guessing [13], [15]. Common to all these paradigms, is the prediction of uncertain events. The neural correlates reported with uncertainty are posterior fronto-median areas, including mesial Brodmann area (BA) 8, anterior mesial BA 6, corresponding to the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and BA 32 often in company with BA 24, usually referred to as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. By contrasting rule learning with item learning, inductive reasoning with deductive reasoning, hypothesis testing with response selection, response conflict with no conflict or guessing with reporting, these studies suggest a general difference between processes under uncertainty and those which are quite certain. However, from where the uncertainty arises is neglected so far.

By using a parametric approach, we investigated whether processes related to the different variants of uncertainty are reflected by fronto-median activations (main effects) and if so, whether this brain activation also increases with increasing uncertainty (parametric effects). In a subsequent group comparison (between-subjects design), it was investigated whether networks underlying externally and internally attributed uncertainty differ significantly. Particularly, since storage and retrieval of acquired visuomotor associations are required for the suggested coping strategy in decisions under internally attributed uncertainty [30], fronto-parietal activations were expected in networks that sub-serve working memory functions [39], [17].

In addition to fronto-median areas orbito-frontal areas are known to be engaged in uncertain decisions, particularly those that are induced by reward expectancy [3], [9], [38], [43]. However, due to technical restrictions of the T2* sequence in a 3T NMR system that usually causes signal voids [37], medial orbito-frontal activations could not be detected in the present experiments.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixteen (five females, mean age 24.9 years, range 21–35 years) right-handed, healthy volunteers participated in Exp. 1 and 12 volunteers (seven females, mean age 25.1, range 20–31 years) in Exp. 2. Informed consent was obtained from each participant according to the declaration of Helsinki. Experimental standards were approved by the local ethics committee of the University of Leipzig. Data were handled anonymously.

Stimuli, task and experimental session

Stimuli consisted of comic pictures showing UFOs differing either in color,

Behavioral results

Performance was measured by the rate of erroneously answered trials and reaction times of correctly answered trials (see Table 1). In Exp. 1, a repeated measures ANOVA with the five-level factor UNCERTAINTY yielded a significant main effect for both error rates (F(4,60) = 54.5; p < .0001) and reaction times (F(4,60) = 6.0; p < .001). A reduction of condition-independent uncertainty over the course of the experimental session was indicated by a significant decrease in reaction times (F(3,45) = 15.4; p < 

Main task effects of externally and internally attributed uncertainty

When testing for the main task effect in Exp. 1 significant activations were elicited within the right posterior fronto-median cortex (pFMC), particularly within mesial BA 8/6, the right anterior insula, the cuneus, the cerebellar vermis extending laterally into the paramedian portion of the left cerebellar hemisphere and within a sub-cortical network, including the ventral striatum, the thalamus and the right midbrain area (see Fig. 2 and Table 2). Testing for the main task effect in Exp. 2

Discussion

Experiment 1 as well as Experiment 2 were designed to investigate whether processes related to different variants of uncertainty are reflected within the same brain areas. By using a parametric approach and therewith inducing different degrees of uncertainty, it was aimed to identify and compare the brain correlates of processes related to externally attributed uncertainty (Exp. 1), i.e., uncertainty of frequency, with those of processes related to internally attributed uncertainty, i.e.,

Acknowledgments

We thank Andrea Gast-Sandmann for the stimulus material, Jennifer Kittel for assistance with data analysis, Karsten Mueller Andre Szameitat and Stefan Zysset for support in fMRI statistics. This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (SPP 1107).

Note: this manuscript combines results from two papers which were recently published in Neuroimage [52], [53].

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