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Neuroeconomics: making risky choices in the brain

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Choosing to accept enough risk, but not too much, is an important survival skill, and depending on the circumstances, animals may either seek or avoid risk. Given the choice between a sure bet and a larger but uncertain reward, a paper in this issue reports macaques consistently take the riskier option, and posterior cingulate cortex neurons represent the riskiness of those choices.

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Figure 1: Utility theory's account of risk preference based on the comparison between the utility of the average outcome or reward, U(x̄), and the expected utility, E{U(x)} (black disk).

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  1. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, 14627, New York, USA

    Daeyeol Lee

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  1. Daeyeol Lee
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Lee, D. Neuroeconomics: making risky choices in the brain. Nat Neurosci 8, 1129–1130 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0905-1129

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