Citation

Heilbronner SR. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 2017; 16: 23-29.

Affiliation

Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, 601 Elmwood Ave, Box 711, Rochester, NY 14642.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.03.001

PMID

28523287

PMCID

PMC5431286

Abstract

Understanding the neural mechanisms of risky decision-making is critical to developing appropriate treatments for psychiatric disorders, problem gambling, and addiction to drugs of abuse. Probing neurobiological mechanisms requires the use of nonhuman animal models (particularly rhesus macaques, rats, and mice). However, there is considerable variation across species in risk preferences. Nevertheless, there are shared core features of risky decision-making present across species. As demonstrated with a wide variety of behavioral paradigms, modulators of risk preference observed in humans are readily replicated in model species. Thus, risky decision-making represents an important implementation of reward-guided decision-making that is feasibly modeled across species.

Language: en