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Anticipation of monetary gain but not loss in healthy older adults

Nature Neuroscience volume 10, pages 787–791 (2007)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 01 September 2007

This article has been updated

Abstract

Although global declines in structure have been documented in the aging human brain, little is known about the functional integrity of the striatum and prefrontal cortex in older adults during incentive processing. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine whether younger and older adults differed in both self-reported and neural responsiveness to anticipated monetary gains and losses. The present study provides evidence for intact striatal and insular activation during gain anticipation with age, but shows a relative reduction in activation during loss anticipation. These findings suggest that there is an asymmetry in the processing of gains and losses in older adults that may have implications for decision-making.

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Figure 1: Age by valence by magnitude interaction in post-task cue ratings.
Figure 2: Between-group t-tests of loss versus nonloss anticipation contrast maps (older adults > younger adults; SVC, z > 2.81; P < 0.005 uncorrected).
Figure 3: BOLD activation extracted from the medial caudate at anticipation.
Figure 4: BOLD activation extracted from the anterior insula at anticipation.

Change history

  • 13 August 2007

    In the version of this article initially published, the first author’s name was incorrect. The first author’s name should be Gregory R Samanez-Larkin. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

Notes

  1. *NOTE: In the version of this article initially published, the first author’s name was incorrect. The first author’s name should be Gregory R Samanez-Larkin. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank G.E. Wimmer and N.G. Hollon for assistance with data collection. This research was supported by US National Institute on Aging Research Grant AG008816, Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging grant AG017253 and Center on Advancing Decision Making in Aging grant AG024957.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, Stanford, 94305-2130, California, USA

    Gregory R Samanez-Larkin, Sasha E B Gibbs, Kabir Khanna, Laura L Carstensen & Brian Knutson

  2. Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, 132 Barker Hall, Berkeley, 94720-3190, California, USA

    Sasha E B Gibbs

  3. National Institute on Aging and National Institutes of Health, 7201 Wisconsin Avenue, #533, Bethesda, 20892-9205, Maryland, USA

    Lisbeth Nielsen

  4. Stanford Center on Longevity, Encina Hall, 616 Serra Street, Stanford, 94305-6055, California, USA

    Laura L Carstensen

  5. Neuroscience Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    Brian Knutson

Authors
  1. Gregory R Samanez-Larkin
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  2. Sasha E B Gibbs
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  3. Kabir Khanna
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  4. Lisbeth Nielsen
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  5. Laura L Carstensen
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  6. Brian Knutson
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Contributions

G.S.L., S.G., L.N., L.C. and B.K. designed the experiment. G.S.L., S.G. and K.K. collected and analyzed the data. All of the authors contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory R Samanez-Larkin.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Post-task cue ratings. (PDF 524 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Gain versus nongain anticipation contrast maps for younger adults and older adults. (PDF 4575 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Loss versus nonloss anticipation contrast maps for younger adults and older adults. (PDF 4429 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

BOLD activation extracted from the ventral striatum at anticipation. (PDF 495 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 5

Time courses of activation during anticipation of gain and loss in right ventral striatum. (PDF 654 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 6

Correlations between self-reported affect and brain activation. (PDF 616 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 7

Correlations between self-reported affect and brain activation. (PDF 627 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 8

Time courses of activation during anticipation of gain and loss in left medial caudate. (PDF 651 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 9

Time courses of activation during anticipation of gain and loss in right anterior insula. (PDF 651 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 10

Gain versus nongain outcome contrast maps for younger adults and older adults. (PDF 8582 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 11

Time courses of activation during outcome in left MPFC. (PDF 636 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 12

Time courses of activation during outcome in right ventral striatum. (PDF 639 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 13

MIL task performance. (PDF 582 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 14

MIL task performance over time. (PDF 518 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 15

Time courses of activation from individual participants extracted from voxels in primary visual cortex during a visual localizer task. (PDF 503 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 16

MID task schematic. (PDF 2558 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 17

MIL task schematic. (PDF 1904 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Group maps for younger adults and older adults. (PDF 64 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Comparison of older versus younger adults. (PDF 36 kb)

Supplementary Table 3

Monetary incentive learning (MIL) task performance. (PDF 32 kb)

Supplementary Table 4

Demographics, questionnaire data and cognitive test battery results. (PDF 40 kb)

Supplementary Table 5

Placement of 6-mm-diameter VOI spheres. (PDF 45 kb)

Supplementary Discussion

Study 1. (PDF 67 kb)

Supplementary Methods

Study 1. (PDF 103 kb)

Supplementary Results

Study 1. (PDF 143 kb)

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Samanez-Larkin, G., Gibbs, S., Khanna, K. et al. Anticipation of monetary gain but not loss in healthy older adults. Nat Neurosci 10, 787–791 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1894

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