Volumetric variability of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reflects the propensity for engaging in high-stakes gambling behavior

Description: Abstract: Human ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has been traditionally associated with deci-sion-making under risk. Neuroimaging studies of such decision-making process have largely focused on patients with vmPFC lesions or pathological gambling behavior, leading to a relative paucity of work focusing on the structural variability of the vmPFC in healthy individuals. To address this, we developed a decision-making task that allowed the healthy players to choose to participate in either low stakes or high-stakes gambling on a trial-by-trial basis, and we computed a metric that indexes the propensity for engaging in gambles with greater potential payoffs. We leveraged voxel-based morphometric analyses to examine the association between prefrontal gray matter volume and individual differences in the propensity for seeking high-risk/high-reward situations. Our analyses showed that vmPFC gray matter volume was inversely correlated with increased tendency for engaging in high-stakes gambling. These results converge upon findings from functional neuroimaging and brain lesion studies of vmPFC, and further extend them to show that normative variability in brain structure could also underpin risk-taking behavior. Notes: VBM analyses were performed using FSLVBM(https://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/FSLVBM). Please refer to the images meta data for the experimental variables. A link to the article associated with this dataset - which will include detailed data processing steps - will be provided once it is published.