Neuro- and Behavioral Economics of Cognitive Effort

认知努力的神经和行为经济学

• 批准号: 8737039
• 负责人: John Andrew Westbrook
• 金额: $ 4.27万
• 依托单位: WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8737039
• 关键词: Accounting; Address; Adult; Anterior; Behavioral; Brain; Cognitive; Cognitive deficits; Communication; Computer Simulation; Cost Measures; Costs and Benefits; Data; Decision Making; Depressed mood; Development; Diagnostic; Dimensions; Disease; Dopamine; Economics; Foundations; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Individual; Influentials; Intelligence; Lesion; Major Depressive Disorder; Measurable; Measures; Mental Depression; Mental disorders; Metric; Motivation; Outcome; Participant; Patient Self-Report; Performance; Physical Efforts; Physiological; Prefrontal Cortex; Procedures; Psyche structure; Psychophysiology; Research; Rewards; Risk; Role; Short-Term Memory; System; Testing; Ventral Striatum; Work; base; cingulate cortex; clinical decision-making; cognitive control; cognitive function; cost; discounting; economic impact; improved; indexing; innovation; interest; neuroeconomics; neuromechanism; novel; prospective; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; tool; willingness

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sustained, intensive cognitive effort can yield substantial benefits in terms of improved decision-making and generally enhanced cognitive performance. Cognitive effort, however, is often treated as aversive, as evidenced by substantial behavioral biases against effortful engagement. Among healthy adults, there appear to be measurable differences in how aversive individuals find cognitive effort, contributing to differences in performance, unexplained by measures of intelligence. Effort may be particularly aversive in disorders of anergia and apathy. It may explain why individuals with Major Depression, for example, demonstrate average performance on low effort tasks yet perform below average on demanding tasks. Despite the import of this central bias against cognitive engagement among healthy individuals and those with mental disorder, little is understood about why cognitive effort is aversive, or about the neural systems involved in decisions about task engagement. To address this gap, this project utilizes a novel behavioral economic paradigm towards the development of a neuroeconomics of cognitive effort. The novel paradigm yields first-ever, quantitative, between and within individual estimates of the cost of cognitive effort. The first Aim of this study seeks to validate the novel paradigm by demonstrating correlations of subjective cost estimates with traditional physiological and self-report measures of cognitive effort. Next, the paradigm will be used to investigate individual and task specific factors which make cognitive effort subjectively costly. Combined fMRI and pupillometry will be used to probe specific hypotheses about physiological markers of cognitive effort. Finally, following recent advances in neuroeconomics, the novel cost estimates will be used in parametric tests of fMRI data collected as individuals decide whether to engage in demanding tasks. This approach will be used to test specific hypotheses about the neural systems involved in on-going and prospective decisions to expend cognitive effort among healthy adults. This work will also thereby provide a foundation for elucidating why cognitive effort may be particularly aversive in depression.

描述（由申请人提供）：持续的，密集的认知努力可以在改善决策和一般增强的认知表现方面产生可观的好处。然而，认知努力通常被视为厌恶性，这是由反对努力参与的实质性偏见所证明的。在健康的成年人中，厌恶的个体如何找到认知努力，导致表现差异，无法解释智力衡量，似乎存在可衡量的差异。努力可能在胃病和冷漠的疾病中尤其令人反感。它可以解释为什么患有严重抑郁症的人例如表明在低努力任务上的平均表现却低于平均水平的任务。尽管这种核心偏见反对健康的个体和精神障碍的人的认知参与，但几乎没有理解认知努力是厌恶的，或者涉及参与有关任务参与决策的神经系统。为了解决这一差距，该项目利用一种新颖的行为经济范式来发展认知努力的神经经济学。新型范式在个人认知工作成本之间和在各个估计之间产生了有史以来的定量。这项研究的第一个目的旨在通过证明主观成本估计与传统的生理和自我报告认知努力的衡量标准的相关性来验证新型范式。接下来，该范式将用于调查个人和任务的特定因素，这些因素使认知努力主观成本高昂。 FMRI和瞳孔合并的合并将用于探测有关认知工作生理标志物的特定假设。最后，随着神经经济学的最新进展，新颖的成本估算将用于收集的fMRI数据的参数测试，因为个人决定是否从事苛刻的任务。这种方法将用于测试有关持续和前瞻性决策的神经系统的特定假设，以消耗健康成年人的认知努力。这项工作还将为阐明为什么认知努力在抑郁症中特别厌恶的基础。