Neurocognitive development of risk aversion from early childhood to adulthood

Human adults tend to avoid risk. in behavioral economic studies,risk aversion is manifest as a preference for sure gains over uncertain gains. however,children tend to be less averse to risk than adults. given that many of the brain regions supporting decision-making under risk do not reach maturity until late adolescence or beyond it is possible that mature risk-averse behavior may emerge from the development of decision-making circuitry. to explore this hypothesis,we tested 5- to 8-year-old children,14- to 16-year-old adolescents,and young adults in a risky-decision task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) data acquisition. to our knowledge,this is the youngest sample of children in an fmri decision-making task. we found a number of decision-related brain regions to increase in activation with age during decision-making,including areas associated with contextual memory retrieval and the incorporation of prior outcomes into the current decision-making strategy,e.g.,insula,hippocampus,and amygdala. further,children who were more riskaverse showed increased activation during decision-making in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum. our findings indicate that the emergence of adult levels of risk aversion co-occurs with the recruitment of regions supporting decision-making under risk,including the integration of prior outcomes into current decision-making behavior. this pattern of results suggests that individual differences in the development of risk aversion may reflect differences in the maturation of these neural processes. © 2012 paulsen,carter,platt,huettel and brannon.