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According to other studies, different parts of the brain are responsible for different kinds of decisions. A research team headed by Luca Franziska Kaiser and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Jocham in the HHU working group’Biological Psychology of Decision Making’, and Dr. Theo Gruendler together with colleagues in Magdeburg examined the balance of the messenger substances GABA and glutamate in 2 forms of decision-making.
The background to the research was to discover how different concentrations of the substances influence the person making the choice.
On the one hand, the investigators looked at’reward-based decisions’, which involve maximizing reward by selecting the greater of two current options. Luca Kaiser gives a simple example:”Where do I purchase coffee on my way to work, depending on the purchase price, quality and whether the café is in my way?”
‘Patch-leaving decisions’ are about long-term tactical issues which have an extensive balancing of cost against gain. A good example of such a decision would be whether to move from Düsseldorf to Munich for a job offer.
The job in Munich may offer a higher salary and a more interesting role, but may also involve stress and the effort involved in finding a place to live and moving to Munich as well as higher rents and the loss of social contacts in Düsseldorf.”
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Jocham, Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf
So there are lots of factors that influence this type of decision. According to the literature, such decisions are made in the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, or dACC for short.
Both messenger materials glutamate and GABA play a key role, and the ratio between the two determines the’E/I equilibrium’ between excitatory and inhibitory transmission action. The researchers used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to assess the concentrations of GABA and glutamate in different cortical areas of different subjects.
The team then used the information to correlate the ratio of the two messenger substances with the individual decision-making behavior of the subjects. In the patch-leaving scenario, subjects with a greater ratio of GABA to glutamate in dACC were quicker to leave a depleting resource. By comparison, people with higher concentrations of glutamate needed a larger quality improvement before choosing to leave their current patch.
In the other scenario, subjects with higher concentrations of GABA relative to glutamate in vmPFC exhibited significantly increased decision accuracy. They were more reliable at selecting the higher-value option.
Luca Kaiser states:”Our results show a correlation between decision-making behavior and the balance of 2 messenger substances in the brain. People with a higher ratio of excitation to inhibition in dACC need more of an incentive to move away from their status quo. By comparison, people with more GABA in vmPFC exhibit greater accuracy for short-term conclusions.”
Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf
Kaizer, L. F., et al. (2021) Dissociable roles of cortical excitation-inhibition balance during patch-leaving versus value-guided decisions. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20875-w.