Does Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Damage Really Increase Impulsiveness? Delay and Probability Discounting in Patients with Focal Lesions

Mok, Jenkin Ngo Yin; Green, Leonard; Myerson, Joel; Kwan, Donna; Kurczek, Jake; Ciaramelli, Elisa; Craver, Carl F.; Rosenbaum, R. Shayna

doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01721

Cited by 14 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…The four groups may largely depend on the location of brain lesions, namely the amygdala, temporal, and frontal. Indeed, these results concur with past lesion studies indicating that amygdala lesions may be selective to impairments in emotional face processing ( 56 – 61 ), whereas lesions to mOFC/vmPFC increase deficits in valuation and reward-guided decision-making ( 62 – 65 ). Interestingly, the four groups also differ in their spatial similarity with receptor maps.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

The origins of evil: From lesions to the functional architecture of the antisocial brain

Dugré

Potvin²

2022

Front. Psychiatry

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In the past decades, a growing body of evidence has suggested that some individuals may exhibit antisocial behaviors following brain lesions. Recently, some authors have shown that lesions underpinning antisocial behaviors may disrupt a particular brain network during resting-state. However, it remains unknown whether these brain lesions may alter specific mental processes during tasks. Therefore, we conducted meta-analytic co-activation analyses on lesion masks of 17 individuals who acquired antisocial behaviors following their brain lesions. Each lesion mask was used as a seed of interest to examine their aberrant co-activation network using a database of 143 whole-brain neuroimaging studies on antisocial behaviors (n = 5,913 subjects). We aimed to map the lesion brain network that shows deficient activity in antisocial population against a null distribution derived from 655 control lesions. We further characterized the lesion-based meta-analytic network using term-based decoding (Neurosynth) as well as receptor/transporter density maps (JuSpace). We found that the lesion meta-analytic network included the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, ventro- and dorso-medial prefrontal cortex, fusiform face area, and supplementary motor area (SMA), which correlated mainly with emotional face processing and serotoninergic system (5-HT1A and 5-HTT). We also investigated the heterogeneity in co-activation networks through data-driven methods and found that lesions could be grouped in four main networks, encompassing emotional face processing, general emotion processing, and reward processing. Our study shows that the heterogeneous brain lesions underpinning antisocial behaviors may disrupt specific mental processes, which further increases the risk for distinct antisocial symptoms. It also highlights the importance and complexity of studying brain lesions in relationship with antisocial behaviors.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

The origins of evil: From lesions to the functional architecture of the antisocial brain

Dugré

Potvin²

2022

Front. Psychiatry

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“…All participants were neurotypical and had no psychiatric or addiction history. We decided to screen participants with the characteristic as each of them has been proved to influence, in different ways, discounting behavior (e.g., Amlung et al, 2019 ; Mok et al, 2021 ). The experiment was performed online, with the platform E-primeGO (Psychology Software Tools, Inc. E-Prime Go; 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face Mask Reduces the Effect of Proposer’s (Un)Trustworthiness on Intertemporal and Risky Choices

et al. 2022

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Previous literature suggested that individuals increase temporal and risk discounting at the presence of a proposer whose face is perceived as untrustworthy, suggesting the activation of protective choice patterns. By the way, the COVID-19 pandemic has substantially transformed the way we interact with other people, even bringing us into situations where the face of the person making a proposal is not fully visible, because of the mask. With the current study, we aimed at verifying if the effect of proposer’s facial (un)trustworthiness on discounting behavior is modulated by mask wearing. In two different experiments, participants performed traditional delay and probability discounting tasks with masked proposers manipulated across trustworthiness levels. Results highlighted that, even after checking for subject-specific emotion recognition ability with masked faces, the presence of a masked untrustworthy proposer increases both delay and probability discounting parameters, although the effect is not statistically significant and smaller than the one detected at the presence of an untrustworthy proposer without a mask. These results suggest that the ability to perceive the proposer’s (un)trustworthiness is affected by the mask, with a consequent less strong effect of proposer’s (un)trustworthiness on choice behavior on both intertemporal and risky choices. Limits and possible implications are outlined and discussed.

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“…One of the four Italian patients included in the study had participated in a previous study on uncued DD (Sellitto et al, 2010). All eight Canadian patients had taken part in study on DD and probability discounting (both without cues) conducted shortly before the present experiment (Mok et al, 2021), and their uncued DD data are included in the current Standard condition data. As for EFT, all Italian patients had participated in two EFT studies run between 2013 and 2015 (Bertossi et al, 2016b;Bertossi et al, 2017), whereas all Canadian patients were tested between 2015-2019, with results reported for the first time here (see Table 1 and Table 2).…”

Section: Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in reward valuation and future thinking during intertemporal choice

Ciaramelli

Luca

Kwan

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Intertemporal choices require trade-offs between short-term and long-term outcomes. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage causes steep discounting of future rewards (delay discounting; DD) and impoverished episodic future thinking (EFT). The role of vmPFC in reward valuation, EFT, and their interaction during intertemporal choice is still unclear. Here, twelve patients with lesions to vmPFC and forty-one healthy controls chose between smallerimmediate and larger-delayed rewards while we manipulated reward magnitude and the availability of EFT cues. In the EFT condition, participants imagined personal events to occur at the delays associated with the larger-delayed rewards. We found that DD was steeper in vmPFC patients compared to controls, and not modulated by reward magnitude. However, EFT cues downregulated DD in vmPFC patients as well as controls. These findings indicate that vmPFC integrity is critical for the valuation of (future) rewards, but not to instill EFT in intertemporal choice.

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Does Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Damage Really Increase Impulsiveness? Delay and Probability Discounting in Patients with Focal Lesions

Cited by 14 publications

References 87 publications

The origins of evil: From lesions to the functional architecture of the antisocial brain

The origins of evil: From lesions to the functional architecture of the antisocial brain

Face Mask Reduces the Effect of Proposer’s (Un)Trustworthiness on Intertemporal and Risky Choices

The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in reward valuation and future thinking during intertemporal choice

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