Brain areas activated by uncertain reward-based decision-making in healthy volunteers

Reward-based decision-making has been found to activate several brain areas, including the ven- trolateral prefronta~ lobe, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, ventral striatum, and mesolimbic dopaminergic system. In this study, we observed brain areas activated under three de- grees of uncertainty in a reward-based decision-making task （certain, risky, and ambiguous）. The tasks were presented using a brain function audiovisual stimulation system. We conducted brain scans of 15 healthy volunteers using a 3.0T magnetic resonance scanner. We used SPM8 to ana- lyze the location and intensity of activation during the reward-based decision-making task, with re- spect to the three conditions. We found that the orbitofrontal cortex was activated in the certain reward condition, while the prefrontal cortex, precentral gyrus, occipital visual cortex, inferior parietal lobe, cerebellar posterior lobe, middle temporal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, limbic lobe, and midbrain were activated during the ＇risk＇ condition. The prefrontal cortex, temporal pole, inferior temporal gyrus, occipital visual cortex, and cerebellar posterior lobe were activated during am- biguous decision-making. The ventrolateral prefrontal lobe, frontal pole of the prefrontal lobe, orbi- tofrontal cortex, precentral gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, infe- rior parietal Iobule, and cerebellar posterior lobe exhibited greater activation in the ＇risk＇ than in the ＇certain＇ condition （P 〈 0.05）. The frontal pole and dorsolateral region of the prefrontal lobe, as well as the cerebellar posterior lobe, showed significantly greater activation in the ＇ambiguous＇ condition compared to the ＇risk＇ condition （P 〈 0.05）. The prefrontal lobe, occipital lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, limbic lobe, midbrain, and posterior lobe of the cerebellum were activated during deci- sion-making about uncertain rewards. Thus, we observed different levels and regions of activation for different types of reward processing during decision-making. Specifically, when the degree of reward uncertainty increased, the number of activated brain areas increased, including greater ac- tivation of brain areas associated with loss.