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A neural and behavioral trade-off between value and uncertainty underlies exploratory decisions in normative anxiety

Molecular Psychiatry volume 27, pages 1573–1587 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Exploration reduces uncertainty about the environment and improves the quality of future decisions, but at the cost of provisional uncertain and suboptimal outcomes. Although anxiety promotes intolerance to uncertainty, it remains unclear whether and by which mechanisms anxiety relates to exploratory decision-making. We use a dynamic three-armed-bandit task and find that higher trait-anxiety is associated with increased exploration, which in turn harms overall performance. We identify two distinct behavioral sources: first, decisions made by anxious individuals are guided toward reduction of uncertainty; and second, decisions are less guided by immediate value gains. These findings are similar in both loss and gain domains, and further demonstrate that an affective trait relates to exploration and results in an inverse-U-shaped relationship between anxiety and overall performance. Additional imaging data (fMRI) suggests that normative anxiety correlates negatively with the representation of expected-value in the dorsal-anterior-cingulate-cortex, and in contrast, positively with the representation of uncertainty in the anterior-insula. We conclude that a trade-off between value-gains and uncertainty-reduction entails maladaptive decision-making in individuals with higher normal-range anxiety.

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Fig. 1: Paradigm and individual behavior.
Fig. 2: Behavioral results.
Fig. 3: Modeling behavior.
Fig. 4: Individually fitted model parameters.
Fig. 5: BOLD signal during exploratory decision making.

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Data availability

The data used for data analyses can be provided following reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used for data analyses can be provided following reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Edna Furman-Haran and Fanny Attar for MRI procedures. KCA is incumbent of The Sam and Frances Belzberg Research Fellow Chair in Memory and Learning, and was also supported by a Swiss Society of Friends of the Weizmann Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship grant. The work was supported by a Joy-Ventures grant, an ISF #2352/19, and an ERC-2016-CoG #724910 grants to RP.

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  1. The Azrieli National Institute for Human Brain Imaging and Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Kristoffer C. Aberg, Ido Toren & Rony Paz

  2. Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Kristoffer C. Aberg, Ido Toren & Rony Paz

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  1. Kristoffer C. Aberg
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KCA and RP designed the study. KCA collected the data. KCA and IT analyzed the data. KCA, IT, and RP wrote and edited the paper.

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Aberg, K.C., Toren, I. & Paz, R. A neural and behavioral trade-off between value and uncertainty underlies exploratory decisions in normative anxiety. Mol Psychiatry 27, 1573–1587 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-021-01363-z

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