Temporal discounting predicts risk sensitivity in rhesus macaques.

ABSTRACT: Humans and animals tend both to avoid uncertainty and to prefer immediate over future rewards. The comorbidity of psychiatric disorders such as impulsivity, problem gambling, and addiction suggests that a common mechanism may underlie risk sensitivity and temporal discounting. Nonetheless, the precise relationship between these two traits remains largely unknown. To examine whether risk sensitivity and temporal discounting reflect a common process, we recorded choices made by two rhesus macaques in a visual gambling task while we varied the delay between trials. We found that preference for the risky option declined with increasing delay between sequential choices in the task, even when all other task parameters were held constant. These results were quantitatively predicted by a model tha

SUBMITTER: Hayden BY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1868415 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature