Abstract
Neuroeconomics refers to a combination of paradigms derived from neuroscience, psychology, and economics for the study of decision making and is an area that has received considerable scientific attention in the recent literature. Using realistic laboratory tasks, researchers seek to study the neurocognitive processes underlying economic decision making and outcome-based decision learning, as well as individual differences in these processes and the social and affective factors that modulate them. To this point, one question has remained largely unanswered: What happens to decision-making processes and their neural substrates during aging? After all, aging is associated with neurocognitive change, which may affect outcome-based decision making. In our study, we use the subjective expected utility model—a well-established decision-making model in economics—as a descriptive framework. After a short survey of the brain areas and neurotransmitter systems associated with outcome-based decision making—and of the effects of aging thereon—we review a number of decision-making studies. Their general data pattern indicates that the decision-making process is changed by age: The elderly perform less efficiently than younger participants, as demonstrated, for instance, by the smaller total rewards that the elderly acquire in lab tasks. These findings are accounted for in terms of age-related deficiencies in the probability and value parameters of the subjective expected utility model. Finally, we discuss some implications and suggestions for future research.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, J. S., Bruss, J., Brown, C. K., & Damasio, H. (2005). Methods for studying the aging brain: Volumetric analyses versus VBM. Neurobiology of Aging, 26, 1275–1278. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.05.017
Allison, T., Puce, A., & McCarthy, G. (2000). Social perception from visual cues: Role of the STS region. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 267–278. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01501-1
Amodio, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Meeting of minds: The medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 268–277.
Bäckman, L., Nyberg, L., Lindenberger, U., Li, S.-C., & Farde, L. (2006). The correlative triad among aging, dopamine, and cognition: Current status and future prospects. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 791–807. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2006.06.005
Balleine, B. W., Delgado, M. R., & Hikosaka, O. (2007). The role of the dorsal striatum in reward and decision-making. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 8161–8165. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1554-07.2007
Band, G. P. H., Ridderinkhof, K. R., & Segalowitz, S. (2002). Explaining neurocognitive aging: Is one factor enough? Brain & Cognition, 49, 259–267. doi:10.1006/brcg.2001.1499
Baron-Cohen, S., Ring, H. A., Wheelwright, S., Bullmore, E. T., Brammer, M. J., Simmons, A., & Williams, S. C. R. (1999). Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: An fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 1891–1898.
Bechara, A., & Damasio, A. R. (2005). The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision. Games & Economic Behavior, 52, 336–372. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2004.06.010
Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7–15. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90018-3
Bhatt, M., & Camerer, C. F. (2005). Self-referential thinking and equilibrium as states of mind in games: fMRI evidence. Games & Economic Behavior, 52, 424–459. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2005.03.007
Braver, T. S., & Barch, D. M. (2002). A theory of cognitive control, ageing cognition, and neuromodulation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 809–817.
Brunet, E., Sarfati, Y., Hardy-Baylé, M.-C., & Decety, J. (2000). PET investigation of the attribution of intentions with a nonverbal task. NeuroImage, 11, 157–166. doi:10.1006/nimg.1999.0525
Calder, A. J., Lawrence, A. D., & Young, A. W. (2001). Neuropsychology of fear and loathing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 352–363.
Carstensen, L. L. (1992). Social and emotional patterns in adulthood: Support for socioemotional selectivity theory. Psychology & Aging, 7, 331–338.
Castelli, F., Happé, F., Frith, U., & Frith, C. (2000). Movement and mind: A functional imaging of perception and interpretation of complex intentional movement patterns. NeuroImage, 12, 314–325. doi:10.1006/nimg.2000.0612
Chamberlain, S. R., Müller, U., Blackwell, A. D., Clark, L., Robbins, T. W., & Sahakian, B. J. (2006). Neurochemical modulation of response inhibition and probabilistic learning in humans. Science, 311, 861–863. doi:10.1126/science.1121218
Chasseigne, G., Ligneau, C., Grau, S., Le Gall, A., Roque, M., & Mullet, E. (2004). Aging and probabilistic learning in single- and multiple-cue tasks. Experimental Aging Research, 30, 23–45.
Chou, K.-L., Lee, T. M. C., & Ho, A. H. Y. (2007). Does mood state change risk taking tendency in older adults? Psychology & Aging, 22, 310–318. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.22.2.310
Cools, R., Clark, L., Owen, A. M., & Robbins, T. W. (2002). Defining the neural mechanisms of probabilistic reversal learning using eventrelated functional magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 4563–4567.
Cools, R., Roberts, A. C., & Robbins, T. W. (2008). Serotoninergic regulation of emotional and behavioural control processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 31–40. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.10.011
Cools, R., Robinson, O. J., & Sahakian, B. (2008). Acute tryptophan depletion in healthy volunteers enhances punishment prediction but does not affect reward prediction. Neuropsychopharmacology, 33, 2291–2299. doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301598
Cox, K. M., Aizenstein, H. J., & Fiez, J. A. (2008). Striatal outcome processing in healthy aging. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 304–317. doi:10.3758/CABN.8.3.304
Critchley, H. D., Elliott, R., Mathias, C. J., & Dolan, R. J. (2000). Neural activity relating to generation of galvanic skin conductance responses: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 3033–3040.
Cromwell, H. C., & Schultz, W. (2003). Effects of expectations for different reward magnitudes on neuronal activity in primate striatum. Journal of Neurophysiology, 89, 2823–2838. doi:10.1152/ jn.01014.2002
Curtis, C. E., & D’Esposito, M. (2003). Persistent activity in the prefrontal cortex during working memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 415–423. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00197-9
Dawes, C. T., Fowler, J. H., Johnson, T., McElreath, R., & Smirnov, O. (2007). Egalitarian motives in humans. Nature, 446, 794–796. doi:10.1038/nature05651
Deakin, J., Aitken, M., Robbins, T., & Sahakian, B. J. (2004). Risk taking during decision-making in normal volunteers changes with age. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 10, 590–598. doi:10.1017/S1355617704104104
Delgado, M. R., Frank, R. H., & Phelps, E. A. (2005). Perceptions of moral character modulate the neural systems of reward during the trust game. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1611–1618. doi:10.1038/nn1575
Denburg, N. L., Bechara, A., & Damasio, A. R. (2005). The ability to decide advantageously declines prematurely in some normal older persons. Neuropsychologia, 43, 1099–1106. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.09.012
Denburg, N. L., Cole, C. A., Hernandez, M., Yamada, T. H., Tranel, D., Bechara, A., & Wallace, R. B. (2007). The orbitofrontal cortex, real-world decision-making, and normal aging. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1121, 480–498. doi:10.1196/ annals.1401.031
Denburg, N. L., Recknor, E. C., Bechara, A., & Tranel, D. (2006). Psychophysiological anticipation of positive outcomes promotes advantageous decision-making in normal older persons. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 61, 19–25. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2005.10.021
Derbyshire, S. W. G., Jones, A. K. P., Gyulai, F., Clark, S., Townsend, D., & Firestone, L. L. (1997). Pain processing during three levels of noxious stimulation produces differential patterns of central activity. Pain, 73, 431–445.
Doya, K. (2008). Modulators of decision-making. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 410–416.
Fein, G., McGillivray, S., & Finn, P. (2007). Older adults make less advantageous decisions than younger adults: Cognitive and psychological correlates. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 13, 480–489. doi:10.1017/S135561770707052X
Fera, F., Weickert, T. W., Goldberg, T. E., Tessitore, A., Hariri, A., Das, S., et al. (2005). Neural mechanisms underlying probabilistic category learning in normal aging. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 11340–11348. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2736-05.2005
Fiorillo, C. D., Tobler, P. N., & Schultz, W. (2003). Discrete coding of reward probability and uncertainty by dopamine neurons. Science, 299, 1898–1902. doi:10.1126/science.1077349
Forstmann, B. U., Jahfari, S., Scholte, H. S., Wolfensteller, U., van den Wildenberg, W. P. M., & Ridderinkhof, K. R. (2008). Function and structure of the right inferior frontal cortex predict individual differences in response inhibition: A model-based approach. Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 9790–9796. doi:10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.1465-08.2008
Frank, M. J., & Kong, L. (2008). Learning to avoid in older age. Psychology & Aging, 23, 392–398. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.23.2.392
Frank, M. J., & O’Reilly, R. C. (2006). A mechanistic account of striatal dopamine function in human cognition: Psychopharmalogical with cabergoline and haloperidol. Behavioral Neuroscience, 120, 497–517. doi:10.1037/0735-7044.120.3.497
Frank, M. J., Seeberger, L. C., & O’Reilly, R. C. (2004). By carrot or by stick: Cognitive reinforcement learning in Parkinsonism. Science, 306, 1940–1943. doi:10.1126/science.1102941
Gallagher, H. L., & Frith, C. D. (2002). Functional imaging of “theory of mind”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 77–83.
Gallagher, H. L., Happé, F., Brunswick, N., Fletcher, P. C., Frith, U., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: An fMRI study of “theory of the mind” in verbal and nonverbal tasks. Neuropsychologia, 38, 11–21. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00053-6
Glimcher, P. W., & Rustichini, A. (2004). Neuroeconomics: The consilience of brain and decision. Science, 306, 447–452.
Good, C. D., Johnsrude, I. S., Ashburner, J., Henson, R. N. A., Friston, K. J., & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (2001). A voxel-based morphometric study of ageing in 465 normal adult human brains. Neuro-Image, 14, 21–36. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0786
Grieve, S. M., Williams, L. M., Paul, R. H., Clark, C. R., & Gordon, E.(2007). Cognitive aging, executive function, and fractional anisotropy: A diffusion tensor MR imaging study. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 28, 226–235.
Güroğlu, B., Haselager, G. J. T., van Lieshout, C. F. M., Takashima, A., Rijpkema, M., & Fernández, G. (2008). Why are friends special? Implementing a social interaction simulation task to probe the neural correlates of friendship. NeuroImage, 39, 903–910. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.09.007
Harbaugh, W. T., Mayr, U., & Burghart, D. R. (2007). Neural responses to taxation and voluntary giving reveal motives for charitable donations. Science, 316, 1622–1625. doi:10.1126/science.1140738
Haruno, M., & Kawato, M. (2006). Different neural correlates of reward expectation and reward expectation error in the putamen and caudate nucleus during stimulus-action-reward association learning. Journal of Neurophysiology, 95, 948–959. doi:10.1152/jn.00382.2005
Heuninckx, S., Wenderoth, N., Debaere, F., Peeters, R., & Swinnen, S. P. (2005). Neural basis of aging: The penetration of cognition into action control. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 6787–6796. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1263-05.2005
Hikosaka, O., Bromberg-Martin, E., Hong, S., & Matsumoto, M. (2008). New insights on the subcortical representation of reward. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18, 203–208. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2008.07.002
Holroyd, C. B., & Coles, M. G. H. (2002). The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review, 109, 679–709. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.109.4.679
Isella, V., Mapelli, C., Morielli, N., Pelati, O., Franceschi, M., & Appollonio, I. M. (2008). Age-related quantitative and qualitative changes in decision making ability. Behavioral Neurology, 19, 59–63.
Juncos-Rabadán, O., Pereiro, A. X., & Facal, D. (2008). Cognitive interference and aging: Insights from a spatial stimulus-response consistency task. Acta Psychologica, 127, 237–246. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.05.003
Kaasinen, V., & Rinne, J. O. (2002). Functional imaging studies of dopamine system and cognition in normal aging and Parkinson’s disease. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 785–793.
Kaasinen, V., Vilkman, H., Hietala, J., Någnen, K., Helenius, H., Olsson, H., et al. (2000). Age-related dopamine D2/D3 receptor loss in extrastriatal regions of the human brain. Neurobiology of Aging, 21, 683–688.
King-Casas, B., Tomlin, D., Anen, C., Camerer, C. F., Quartz, S. R., & Montague, P. R. (2005). Getting to know you: Reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science, 308, 78–83. doi:10.1126/science.1108062
Knight, M., Seymour, T. L., Gaunt, J. T., Baker, C., Nesmith, K., & Mather, M. (2007). Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: Distraction reverses emotional biases. Emotion, 7, 705–714. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.705
Knutson, B., & Cooper, J. C. (2005). Functional magnetic resonance imaging of reward prediction. Current Opinion in Neurology, 18, 411–417.
Knutson, B., Taylor, J., Kaufman, M., Peterson, R., & Glover, G. (2005). Distributed neural representation of expected value. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 4806–4812. doi:10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.0642-05.2005
Knutson, B., Westdorp, A., Kaiser, E., & Hommer, D. (2000). fMRI visualization of brain activity during a monetary incentive delay task. NeuroImage, 12, 20–27. doi:10.1006/nimg.2000.0593
Kovalchik, S., Camerer, C. F., Grether, D. M., Plott, C. R., & Allman, J. M. (2005). Aging and decision making: A comparison between neurologically healthy elderly and young individuals. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 58, 79–94. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2003.12.001
Krueger, F., McCabe, K., Moll, J., Kriegeskorte, N., Zahn, R., Strenziok, M., et al. (2007). Neural correlates of trust. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 20084–20089. doi:10.1073/ pnas.0710103104
Lamar, M., & Resnick, S. M. (2004). Aging and prefrontal functions: Dissociating orbitofrontal and dorsolateral abilities. Neurobiology of Aging, 25, 553–558. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2003.06.005
Leclerc, C. M., & Kensinger, E. A. (2008). Age-related differences in medial prefrontal activation in response to emotional images. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 153–164. doi:10.3758/ CABN.8.2.153
Lee, T. M. C., Leung, A. W. S., Fox, P. T., Gao, J.-H., & Chan, C. C. H. (2008). Age-related differences in neural activities during risk taking as revealed by functional MRI. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 3, 7–15. doi:10.1093/scan/nsm033
Li, S.-C., Biele, G., Mohr, P. N. C., & Heekeren, H. R. (2007). Aging and neuroeconomics: Insights from research on neuromodulation of reward-based decision making. Analyse & Kritik, 29, 97–111.
Li, S.-C., Lindenberger, U., & Sikström, S. (2001). Aging cognition: From neuromodulation to representation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 479–486.
MacPherson, S. E., Philips, L. H., & Della Sala, S. (2002). Age, executive function, and social decision making: A dorsolateral prefrontal theory of cognitive aging. Psychology & Aging, 17, 598–609. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.17.4.598
Marschner, A., Mell, T., Wartenburger, I., Villringer, A., Reischies, F. M., & Heekeren, H. R. (2005). Reward-based decision- making and aging. Brain Research Bulletin, 67, 382–390. doi:10.1016/j.brainresbull.2005.06.010
Mata, R., Schooler, L. J., & Rieskamp, J. (2007). The aging decision maker: Cognitive aging and the adaptive selection of decision strategies. Psychology & Aging, 22, 796–810. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.22.4.796
Mather, M. (2006). A review of decision making processes: Weighing the risks and benefits of aging. In L. L. Carstensen & C. R. Hartel (Eds.), When I’m 64: Committee on aging frontiers in social psychology, personality, and adult developmental psychology (pp. 145–173). Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Mather, M., & Knight, M. (2005). Goal-directed memory: The role of cognitive control in older adults’ emotional memory. Psychology & Aging, 20, 554–570. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.20.4.554
Matochik, J. A., Chefer, S. I., Lane, M. A., Woolf, R. I., Morris, E. D., Ingram, D. K., et al. (2000). Age-related decline in striatal volume in monkeys as measured by magnetic resonance imaging. Neurobiology of Aging, 21, 591–598. doi:10.1016/S0197-4580(00)00134-2
Matthews, S. C., Simmons, A. N., Lane, S. D., & Paulus, M. P. (2004). Selective activation of the nucleus accumbens during risktaking decision making. Brain Imaging, 15, 2123–2127.
McCabe, K., Houser, D., Ryan, L., Smith, V., & Trouard, T. (2001). A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 11832–11835. doi:10.1073/pnas.211415698
Mell, T., Heekeren, H. R., Marschner, A., Wartenburger, I., Villringer, A., & Reischies, F. M. (2005). Effect of aging on stimulus- reward association learning. Neuropsychologica, 43, 554–563. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.07.010
Montague, P. R., & Berns, G. S. (2002). Neural economics and the biological substrates of valuation. Neuron, 36, 265–284.
Montague, P. R., & Lohrenz, T. (2007). To detect and correct: Norm violations and their enforcement. Neuron, 56, 14–18. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2007.09.020
Nieuwenhuis, S., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Talsma, D., Coles, M. G. H., Holroyd, C. B., Kok, A., & van der Molen, M. W. (2002). A computational account of altered error processing in older age: Dopamine and the error-related negativity. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2 19–36.
Pan, W.-X., Schmidt, R., Wickens, J. R., & Hyland, B. I. (2005). Dopamine cells respond to predicted events during classical conditioning: Evidence for eligibility traces in the reward-learning network. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 6235–6242. doi:10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.1478-05.2005
Rangel, A., Camerer, C., & Montague, P. R. (2008). A framework for studying the neurobiology of value-based decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 545–556. doi:10.1038/nrn2357
Raz, N., Lindenberger, U., Rodrigue, K. M., Kennedy, K. M., Head, D., Williamson, A., et al. (2005). Regional brain changes in aging healthy adults: General trends, individual differences and modifiers. Cerebral Cortex, 15, 1676–1689. doi:10.1093/cercor/bh1044
Raz, N., Rodrigue, K. M., Kennedy, K. M., Head, D., Gunning-Dixon, F., & Acker, J. D. (2003). Differential aging of the human striatum: Longitudinal evidence. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 24, 1849–1856.
Raz, N., Williamson, A., Gunning-Dixon, F., Head, D., & Acker, J. D. (2000). Neuroanatomical and cognitive correlates of adult age differences in acquisition of a perceptual-motor skill. Neuroimaging & Memory, 51, 85–93.
Resnick, S. M., Lamar, M., & Driscoll, I. (2007). Vulnerability of the orbitofrontal cortex to age-associated structural and functional brain changes. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1121, 562–575. doi:10.1196/annals.1401.027
Reuter-Lorenz, P. A. (2002). New visions of the aging mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 394–400. doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(02)01957-5
Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., & Lustig, C. (2005). Brain aging: Reorganizing discoveries about the aging mind. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 245–251. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.016
Rilling, J. K., Sanfey, A. G., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural correlates of theory of mind within interpersonal reactions. NeuroImage, 22, 1694–1703. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.04.015
Rogers, R. D., Tunbridge, E. M., Bhagwagar, Z., Drevets, W. C., Sahakian, B. J., & Carter, C. S. (2003). Tryptophan depletion alters the decision-making of healthy volunteers through altered processing of reward cues. Neuropsychopharmacology, 28, 153–162. doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300001
Rolls, E. T. (2004). The functions of the orbitofrontal cortex. Brain & Cognition, 55, 11–29. doi:10.1016/S0278-2626(03)00277-X
Ruffman, T., Henry, J. D., Livingstone, V., & Philips, L. H. (2008). A meta-analytic review of emotion recognition and aging: Implications for neuropsychological models of aging. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 863–881. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.01.001
Samanez-Larkin, G. R., Gibbs, S. E. B., Khanna, K., Nielsen, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Knutson, B. (2007). Anticipation of monetary gain but not loss in healthy older adults. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 787–791. doi:10.1038/nn1894
Sanfey, A. G. (2007a). Decision neuroscience: New directions in studies of judgement and decision making. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 151–155. doi:10.1111/j.1467.8721.2007.00494.x
Sanfey, A. G. (2007b). Social decision-making: Insights from game theory and neuroscience. Science, 318, 598–602. doi:10.1126/ science.1142996
Sanfey, A. G., Loewenstein, G., McClure, S. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2006). Neuroeconomics: Cross-currents in research on decisionmaking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 108–116. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.01.009
Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision- making in the Ultimatum Game. Science, 300, 1755–1758. doi:10.1126/ science.1082976
Saxe, R. (2006). Uniquely human social cognition. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16, 235–239. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2006.03.001
Schmitt-Eliassen, J., Ferstl, R., Wiesner, C., Deuschl, G., & Witt, K. (2007). Feedback-based versus observational classification learning in healthy aging and Parkinson’s disease. Brain Research, 1142, 178–188. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.042
Schott, B. H., Niehaus, L., Wittmann, B. C., Schütze, H., Seidenbecher, C. I., Heinze, H.-J., & Düzel, E. (2007). Ageing and early-stage Parkinson’s disease affect separable neural mechanisms of mesolimbic reward processing. Brain, 130, 2412–2424. doi:10.1093/ brain/awm147
Schultz, W. (2000). Multiple reward signals in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1, 199–209.
Schultz, W. (2002). Getting formal with dopamine and reward. Neuron, 36, 241–263.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275, 1593–1599. doi:10.1126/ science.275.5306.1593
Schweighofer, N., Tanaka, S. C., & Doya, K. (2007). Serotonin and the evaluation of future rewards: Theory, experiments, and possible neural mechanisms. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1104, 289–300. doi:10.1196/annals.1390.011
Shohamy, D., Myers, C. E., Grossman, S., Sage, J., Gluck, M. A., & Poldrack, R. A. (2004). Cortico-striatal contributions to feedbackbased learning: Converging data from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Brain, 127, 851–859. doi:10.1093/brain/ahw100
Slessor, G., Phillips, L. H., & Bull, R. (2007). Exploring the specificity of age-related differences in theory of mind tasks. Psychology & Aging, 22, 639–643. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.22.3.639
Sowell, E. R., Peterson, B. S., Thompson, P. M., Welcome, S. E., Henkenius, A. L., & Toga, A. W. (2003). Mapping cortical change across the human life span. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 309–315. doi:10.1038/nn1008
Stout, J. C., Rodawalt, W. C., & Siemers, E. R. (2001). Risky decision making in Huntington’s disease. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 7, 92–101. doi:10.1017/s1355617701711095
Suri, R. E., Bargas, J., & Arbib, M. A. (2001). Modeling functions of striatal dopamine modulation in learning and planning. Neuroscience, 103, 65–85.
Sutter, M., & Kocher, M. G. (2007). Trust and trustworthiness across different age groups. Games & Economic Behavior, 59, 364–382. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2006.07.006
Tanaka, S. C., Doya, K., Okada, G., Ueda, K., Okamoto, Y., & Yamawaki, S. (2004). Prediction of immediate and future rewards differentially recruits cortico-basal ganglia loops. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 887–893. doi:10.1038/nn1279
Tobler, P. N., Fiorillo, C. D., & Schultz, W. (2005). Adaptive coding of reward value by dopamine neurons. Science, 307, 1642–1645. doi:10.1126/science.1105370
Tsuchida, J., Kubo, N., & Kojima, S. (2002). Position reversal learning in aged Japanese macaques. Behavioural Brain Research, 129, 107–112. doi:10.1016/so166-4328(01)00336-9
van Winden, F., Stallen, M., & Ridderinkhof, K. R. (2008). On the nature, modeling, and neural bases of social ties. In D. Houser & K. McCabe (Eds.), Neuroeconomics (pp. 125–159). Bingley, U.K.: Emerald.
Walhovd, K. B., Fjell, A. M., Reinvang, I., Lundervold, A., Dale, A. M., Eilertsen, D. E., et al. (2005). Effects of age on volumes of cortex, white matter and subcortical structures. Neurobiology of Aging, 26, 1261–1270. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.05.020
Wang, G. J., Volkow, N. D., Logan, J., Fowler, J. S., Schlyer, D., MacGregor, R. R., et al. (1995). Evaluation of age-related changes in serotonin 5-HT2 and dopamine D2 receptor availability in healthy human subjects. Life Sciences, 56, L249-L253.
Weiler, J. A., Bellebaum, C., & Daum, I. (2008). Aging affects acquisition and reversal of reward-based associative learning. Learning & Memory, 15, 190–197. doi:10.1101/lm890408
Wood, S., Busemeyer, J., Koling, A., Davis, H., & Cox, C. R. (2005). Older adults as adaptive decision-makers: Evidence from the Iowa Gambling Task. Psychology & Aging, 20, 220–225. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.20.2.220
Woodruff-Pak, D. S. (1997). The neuropsychology of aging. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Zacks, R. T., Radvansky, G., & Hasher, L. (1996). Studies of directed forgetting in older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 22, 143–156.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by a VICI Grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research to K.R.R.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brown, S.B.R.E., Ridderinkhof, K.R. Aging and the neuroeconomics of decision making: A review. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 9, 365–379 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.9.4.365
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.9.4.365