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Abstract
<p id="P1">Risk tolerance, the degree to which an individual is willing to tolerate
risk in order
to achieve a greater expected return, influences a variety of financial choices and
health behaviors. Here we identify intrinsic neural markers for risk tolerance in
a large (n=108) multimodal imaging dataset of healthy young adults, which includes
anatomical and resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging. Using a
data-driven approach, we found that higher risk tolerance was most strongly associated
with greater global functional connectivity (node strength) of and greater gray matter
volume in bilateral amygdala. Further, risk tolerance was positively associated with
functional connectivity between amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex and negatively
associated with structural connectivity between these regions. These findings show
how the intrinsic functional and structural architecture of the amygdala, and amygdala-medial
prefrontal pathways, which have previously been implicated in anxiety, are linked
to individual differences in risk tolerance during economic decision-making.
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