This is what Sarah M. Helfinstein and her collaborators point out in an article recently published in PANAS . It is known that there are certain areas of the brain that are related to risk processing when we decide. What these researchers are examining for the first time is whether the activity of those brain regions can somehow predict the kind of choice we will make: risky or safe. To do this, they performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on a group of healthy people while they performed a task in which they had to make decisions.
According to the authors, the brain activity patterns of the participants made it possible to correctly predict the type of decision they would make in 71.8% of the cases. More specifically, an important role of brain regions that participate in control processes was observed. Thus, the areas that were most activated by avoiding risky decisions were those that best predicted the type of decision that the participants would make.
It could be, say the researchers, that the existence of failures in this control network explains, at least in a certain way, the cases in which a ‘bad’ decision is chosen, an option with greater risk.
Some of these areas of cognitive control are the dorsolateral prefrontal zone or the anterior cingulate , areas also involved in what are known as executive functions, specifically the processes of inhibition of responses and the regulation of impulses.
If we want to make good decisions, perhaps we should start by strengthening our executive functions as part of a strategy. Are you interested?
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
