Alcohol Dependence and Altered Engagement of Brain Networks in Risky Decisions.

ABSTRACT: Alcohol dependence is associated with heightened risk tolerance and altered decision-making. This raises the question as to whether alcohol dependent patients (ADP) are incapable of proper risk assessment. We investigated how healthy controls (HC) and ADP engage neural networks to cope with the increased cognitive demands of risky decisions. We collected fMRI data while 34 HC and 16 ADP played a game that included "safe" and "risky" trials. In safe trials, participants accrued money at no risk of a penalty. In risky trials, reward and risk simultaneously increased as participants were instructed to decide when to stop a reward accrual period. If the participant failed to stop before an undisclosed time, the trial would "bust" and participants would not earn the money from that trial. Indep

SUBMITTER: Zhu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4814760 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature