Variability in Nucleus Accumbens Activity Mediates Age-Related Suboptimal Financial Risk Taking

Abstract

As human life expectancy continues to rise, financial decisions of aging investors may have an increasing impact on the global economy. In this study, we examined age differences in financial decisions across the adult life span by combining functional neuroimaging with a dynamic financial investment task. During the task, older adults made more suboptimal choices than younger adults when choosing risky assets. This age-related effect was mediated by a neural measure of temporal variability in nucleus accumbens activity. These findings reveal a novel neural mechanism by which aging may disrupt rational financial choice.

Age differences in default and reward networks during processing of personally relevant information

“…Samenez-Larkin et al (2007) found a similar reduction of striatal activity during anticipation of losses in older adults, but no age differences in activity during gain anticipation. A subsequent study (Samanez-Larkin, Kuhnen, Yoo, & Knutson, 2010) showed that variability of the response in the ventral striatum of older adults was related to their greater tendency to make suboptimal choices when assessing risky decisions. As with the DN, the function of reward-related areas, or the entire network, has not been examined in older adults during self-relevant tasks.…”

Assessing the Financial Sustainability of China’s Rural Pension System

“…The financial sustainability of old-age pension schemes is an unavoidable issue in contemporary market economies [65]. As suggested at the beginning of this paper, the risk of financial unsustainability in pensions is widespread, which has forced governments in countries, such as Sweden, Canada, United States and well beyond, to enact major reforms [66].…”

Moment-to-moment signal variability in the human brain can inform models of stochastic facilitation now

“…They suggest that it would be "worthwhile to at least consider whether observations of random noise or background fluctuations may be evidence of a source of biological randomness that is potentially exploited in vivo for stochastic facilitation". It is important to note that the study of the functional consequences of moment-to-moment brain signal variability in the absence of exogenously applied noise sources is already a growing research focus in human functional neuroimaging [2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . The overarching trend from these studies is that young, high performing adults exhibit greater signal variability relative to younger children or older adults across a host of different task types.…”

“…For example, not only is human brain signal variability spatially specific 2,3,5,8 , variability-based spatial patterns do not closely resemble typical mean-based patterns 2,3 . This suggests that the functional benefits of variability are not equivalent across all brain areas, and that those regions that do signal functional benefits may not be the same regions that 'activate' according to mean signals.…”

“…This suggests that the functional benefits of variability are not equivalent across all brain areas, and that those regions that do signal functional benefits may not be the same regions that 'activate' according to mean signals. Furthermore, work on ageing that increased variability in several subcortical regions correlates with poorer cognitive performance and older age 3,8 , thus highlighting that variability can sometimes be detrimental in the same neural system in which broad-scale cortical variability confers clear funtional benefits 3 . It is these unique in vivo effects that may prove most useful for informing future models of the crucial elements and bounds of stochastic facilitation, particularly in the context of larger network models.…”