Better the devil you know than the devil you don't: Neural processing of risk and ambiguity
Shuyi Wu,
Sai Sun,
Julia A. Camilleri,
Simon B. Eickhoff,
Rongjun Yu
Affiliations
Shuyi Wu
School of Psychology, Centre for Studies of Psychological Application and Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, P R China; Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Sai Sun
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
Julia A. Camilleri
Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain & Behaviour (INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany
Simon B. Eickhoff
Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain & Behaviour (INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany
Rongjun Yu
Department of Management, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China; Department of Sport, Physical Education and Health, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China; Department of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China; Corresponding author.
Risk and ambiguity are inherent in virtually all human decision-making. Risk refers to a situation in which we know the precise probability of potential outcomes of each option, whereas ambiguity refers to a situation in which outcome probabilities are not known. A large body of research has shown that individuals prefer known risks to ambiguity, a phenomenon known as ambiguity aversion. One heated debate concerns whether risky and ambiguous decisions rely on the same or distinct neural circuits. In the current meta-analyses, we integrated the results of neuroimaging research on decision-making under risk (n = 69) and ambiguity (n = 31). Our results showed that both processing of risk and ambiguity showed convergence in anterior insula, indicating a key role of anterior insula in encoding uncertainty. Risk additionally engaged dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and ventral striatum, whereas ambiguity specifically recruited the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and right anterior insula. Our findings demonstrate overlapping and distinct neural substrates underlying different types of uncertainty, guiding future neuroimaging research on risk-taking and ambiguity aversion.
