Brain Scans Show We Take Risks Because We Can’t Stop Ourselves

Brain Scans Show We Take Risks Because We Can’t Stop Ourselves
Risk-taking behaviors, like drunk driving or unprotected, anonymous sex, were thought to be the result of the brain's overactive desire systems. Now, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, UCLA and other institutions have found that underactivity of the brain's self-control regions also predicts risky behavior. The researchers analyzed fMRI brain scans on 108 individuals as they played a video game that simulated risk-taking behavior. They found that activity in the brain's desire circuitry did a relatively poor job of predicting risk-taking behavior. But, as they wrote in their study in PNAS, activity in the brains executive functioning regions, involved with self-control and delayed gratification, accurately predicted whether a person was likely to make a risky choice (yellow areas in this image are the regions whose activity provides the strongest predictive ability). The researchers say that, without a strong executive function, all of us would make the risky choices because we wouldn't have enough self-control to stop ourselves. This could help neurologists and psychiatrists reframe risky behavior, and the scientists hope to examine external factors that could improve self-control in vulnerable individuals.

Source:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/02/04/brain-scans-risk-taking/
Journal article: Predicting risky choices from brain activity patterns. PNAS, 2014. doi:10.1073/pnas.1321728111
Story via Neuroscience Research Techniques 
Image credit: Sarah Helfinstein/U. of Texas at Austin.