Individual differences in decision making competence revealed by multivariate fMRI

Abstract

While an extensive literature in decision neuroscience has elucidated the neurobiological foundations of decision making, prior research has focused primarily on group‐level effects in a sample population. Due to the presence of inherent differences between individuals’ cognitive abilities, it is also important to examine the neural correlates of decision making that explain interindividual variability in cognitive performance. This study therefore investigated how individual differences in decision making competence, as measured by the Adult Decision Making Competence (A‐DMC) battery, are related to functional brain connectivity patterns derived from resting‐state fMRI data in a sample of 304 healthy participants. We examined connectome‐wide associations, identifying regions within frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital cortex that demonstrated significant associations with decision making competence. We then assessed whether the functional interactions between brain regions sensitive to decision making competence and seven intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) were predictive of specific facets of decision making assessed by subtests of the A‐DMC battery. Our findings suggest that individual differences in specific facets of decision making competence are mediated by ICNs that support executive, social, and perceptual processes, and motivate an integrative framework for understanding the neural basis of individual differences in decision making competence.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 08, 2018
Source ID
10.1002/hbm.24032

Entities

People

  • Aron K. Barbey
  • Christopher E. Zwilling
  • Francisco J. Román
  • Joachim T. Operskalski
  • Tanveer Talukdar

Organizations

  • Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence
  • University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

Tags

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.