Citation

Baek K, Kwon J, Chae JH, Chung YA, Kralik JD, Min JA, Huh H, Choi KM, Jang KI, Lee NB, Kim S, Peterson BS, Jeong J. Sci. Rep. 2017; 7(1): e11228.

Affiliation

Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea. jsjeong@kaist.ac.kr.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/s41598-017-10541-5

PMID

28894106

Abstract

Suicide attempters have been found to be impaired in decision-making; however, their specific biases in evaluating uncertain outcomes remain unclear. Here we tested the hypothesis that suicidal behavior is associated with heightened aversion to risk and loss, which might produce negative predictions about uncertain future events. Forty-five depressed patients with a suicide attempt history, 47 nonsuicidal depressed patients, and 75 healthy controls participated in monetary decision-making tasks assessing risk and loss aversion. Suicide attempters compared with the other groups exhibited greater aversion to both risk and loss during gambles involving potential loss. Risk and loss aversion correlated with each other in the depressed patients, suggesting that a common pathophysiological mechanism underlies these biases. In addition, emotion regulation via suppression, a detrimental emotional control strategy, was positively correlated with loss aversion in the depressed patients, also implicating impairment in regulatory processes. A preliminary fMRI study also found disrupted neural responses to potential gains and losses in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, insula cortex, and left amygdala, brain regions involved in valuation, emotion reactivity, and emotion regulation. The findings thus implicate heightened negative valuation in decision-making under risk, and impaired emotion regulation in depressed patients with a history of suicide attempts.

Language: en