Thinking of risks: A new study on how brain processes lotteries

Scientists have found a crucial part of the rat brain that deals with making decisions about money, especially when faced with risks like lotteries. 

This is the first time they've directly studied how certain parts of the brain affect economic choices. 

These findings help us understand how our brains work when we make decisions about money, particularly in uncertain situations.

How it was tested

To test this, they presented rats with choices between a small, guaranteed reward and a lottery with a fixed chance of winning. 

They used sounds to let the rats know how much they could win with the lottery.

They silenced two specific areas of the rat brain temporarily to see how it affected their decisions. 

When they turned off one area called the frontal orienting field (FOF), the rats became less willing to take risks. 

In other words, they preferred the guaranteed reward over the lottery. 

But this wasn't the case when the other area, the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), was turned off; the effect was small and didn't last long.

The researchers created a model to explain what was happening. 

They thought that the FOF area was tracking the value of the lottery and comparing it to the surebet (the guaranteed reward). 

When they silenced the FOF, the value of the lottery seemed to shrink in the rat's mind, which made them choose the surebet more often, especially when the expected value of the lottery was just a bit higher than the surebet.

Why it's important

This research helps us understand how our brains handle decisions about money and risks, and it's a step towards learning more about the brain circuits involved in these choices. 

They're planning to look into more details of how these brain parts work and how decisions turn into actions.
 

• Related news:
• research
• brain
• lottery
• 24 October 2023

---