Age-related deficits in decision making are well documented and these decisions often have huge social implications for individuals and their family members, leading to significant pressure to make the best decisions. Much of the previous research on aging focused on history-independent decision-making tasks for which current rewards are independent of previous decisions. This research ignores situations where the current rewards available from each option are influenced by previous decisions. History-dependent decisions are ubiquitous and they are often accompanied by various forms of pressure. Recent work in our labs suggests that older adults perform better in history-dependent situations while younger adults perform better in history- independent situations. However, the precise neural and computational mechanisms associated with these age-based differences remain unclear. Additionally, virtually no research has examined how older adults respond to pressure despite its prevalence. Recent work suggests that normal aging is associated with declines in the neuromodulation of the frontostriatal limbic network associated with decision-making. Other work provides evidence for compensatory over- activation in brain regions, particularly lateral frontal brain regions, for older relative to younger adults in a variety of cognitive tasks. This over-activation is seen as compensatory for neural declines associated with aging and is known as the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (CRUNCH). We hypothesize that compensatory over-activation can account for the age-related advantage in history-dependent decision-making. In addition, compensation related frontal activity in older adults may follow an inverted U- shape as cognitive demand increases. With increased cognitive demand, under-activation in older adults, relative to younger adults might result when the crunch point is reached. Increased pressure in decision- making situations may force older adults to hit such a crunch point. The goal of this proposal is to examine the effects of aging on history-dependent and history-independent decision-making, and to systematically test predictions of the CRUNCH hypothesis as it applies to decision- making under pressure. Our research team is highly qualified to achieve these aims given our expertise in brain imaging, computational modeling, and behavioral studies of normal aging and pressure. We will apply models that assume qualitatively different strategies to the data and prediction errors from these models will be used as regressors with neural activity. We predict that older adults will show greater activation in DLPFC and LOFC, compared to younger adults under no pressure conditions but that older adults will show under- activation in these same regions under pressure conditions.
Aims 1 and 2 examine the neurobiological underpinnings of age-related changes in history-dependent and history-independent decision-making.
Aim 3 extends Aims 1 and 2 by examining decision-making under pressure.

Public Health Relevance

Age-related deficits in decision making are well documented and these decisions often have huge social implications for individuals and their family members, leading to significant pressure to make the best decisions. However, the precise neural and computational mechanisms associated with these age-based differences remain unclear. The overall goal if the proposed research is to provide a detailed behavioral, computational and neural understanding of age-related changes in decision-making under pressure versus no pressure conditions which is critical to improving our understanding of cognitive changes associated with normal aging and to translational work focused on developing interventions to improve decision-making across the lifespan.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG043425-05
Application #
9629937
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1)
Program Officer
Stoeckel, Luke
Project Start
2014-01-15
Project End
2020-12-31
Budget Start
2019-01-01
Budget End
2020-12-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2019
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Texas Austin
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
170230239
City
Austin
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
78759
Byrne, Kaileigh A; Otto, A Ross; Pang, Bo et al. (2018) Substance use is associated with reduced devaluation sensitivity. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci :
O'Bryan, Sean R; Worthy, Darrell A; Livesey, Evan J et al. (2018) Model-based fMRI reveals dissimilarity processes underlying base rate neglect. Elife 7:
Pang, Bo; Blanco, Nathaniel J; Maddox, W Todd et al. (2017) To not settle for small losses: evidence for an ecological aspiration level of zero in dynamic decision-making. Psychon Bull Rev 24:536-546
Cooper, Jessica A; Blanco, Nathaniel J; Maddox, W Todd (2017) Framing matters: Effects of framing on older adults' exploratory decision-making. Psychol Aging 32:60-68
Byrne, Kaileigh A; Davis, Tyler; Worthy, Darrell A (2016) Dopaminergic Genetic Polymorphisms Predict Rule-based Category Learning. J Cogn Neurosci 28:959-70
Worthy, Darrell A; Davis, Tyler; Gorlick, Marissa A et al. (2016) Neural correlates of state-based decision-making in younger and older adults. Neuroimage 130:13-23
Byrne, Kaileigh A; Tibbett, Thomas P; Laserna, Lauren N et al. (2016) Ostracism Reduces Reliance on Poor Advice from Others during Decision Making. J Behav Decis Mak 29:409-418
Thakore, Neha; Reno, James M; Gonzales, Rueben A et al. (2016) Alcohol enhances unprovoked 22-28 kHz USVs and suppresses USV mean frequency in High Alcohol Drinking (HAD-1) male rats. Behav Brain Res 302:228-36
Byrne, Kaileigh A; Norris, Dominique D; Worthy, Darrell A (2016) Dopamine, depressive symptoms, and decision-making: the relationship between spontaneous eye blink rate and depressive symptoms predicts Iowa Gambling Task performance. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 16:23-36
Reetzke, Rachel; Maddox, W Todd; Chandrasekaran, Bharath (2016) The role of age and executive function in auditory category learning. J Exp Child Psychol 142:48-65

Showing the most recent 10 out of 25 publications