Playing it safe or taking a risk: Evoking the human amygdala

Itamar Kahn, Talma Hendler, Itzhak Fried, Dafna Ben-Bashat, Yehezkel Ycshurun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

The involvement of the human amygdala in emotionally charged behavior has been usually studied by classical conditioning or emotional judgement paradigms. Looking for differential brain responses to risky and safe choices, we have constructed a real life situation in which subjects played a video game against the experimenter while being scanned. Subjects were forced by the game's rules to make choices that might involve the risk of being "caught", and worsen their position in the game. Our results demonstrated differential BOLD fMRI signals in the amygdala complex following a risky choice (expecting to be penalized by the experimenter) versus a safe choice (not expecting to be penalized).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)S236
JournalNeuroImage
Volume11
Issue number5 PART II
DOIs
StatePublished - 2000

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