Age Influences Loss Aversion Through Effects on Posterior Cingulate Cortical Thickness

Abstract

Decision-making strategies shift during normal aging and can profoundly affect wellbeing. Although overweighing losses compared to gains, termed “loss aversion,” plays an important role in choice selection, the age trajectory of this effect and how it may be influenced by associated changes in brain structure remain unclear. We therefore investigated the relationship between age and loss aversion, and tested for its mediation by cortical thinning in brain regions that are susceptible to age-related declines and are implicated in loss aversion — the insular, orbitofrontal, and anterior and posterior cingulate cortices. Healthy participants (n = 106, 17–54 years) performed the Loss Aversion Task. A subgroup (n = 78) provided structural magnetic resonance imaging scans. Loss aversion followed a curvilinear trajectory, declining in young adulthood and increasing in middle-age, and thinning of the posterior cingulate cortex mediated this trajectory. The findings suggest that beyond a threshold in middle adulthood, atrophy of the posterior cingulate cortex influences loss aversion.

Value-based decision-making predicts alcohol use and related problems in young men

“…Moreover, drinking patterns develop differentially across the lifespan (Chassin et al, 2013;Thompson et al, 2014;Wichers et al, 2013;Zucker, 2015) and may thus relate differentially to dimensions of decision-making. Cross-sectional studies on one choice aspect cannot delineate predictive or independent effects on drinking, which may stunt the cortical maturation into young adulthood that underlies increasing cognitive control and choice consistency as well as decreasing delay discounting, risk-taking, and loss aversion (Camchong et al, 2014;Guttman et al, 2021;Ripke et al, 2012;Zucker, 2015).…”