Acute Stress Increases Sex Differences in Risk Seeking in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

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Abstract

Background

Decisions involving risk often must be made under stressful circumstances. Research on behavioral and brain differences in stress responses suggest that stress might have different effects on risk taking in males and females.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In this study, participants played a computer game designed to measure risk taking (the Balloon Analogue Risk Task) fifteen minutes after completing a stress challenge or control task. Stress increased risk taking among men but decreased it among women.

Conclusions/Significance

Acute stress amplifies sex differences in risk seeking; making women more risk avoidant and men more risk seeking. Evolutionary principles may explain these stress-induced sex differences in risk taking behavior.

Related collections

Most cited references 32

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The neural basis of loss aversion in decision-making under risk.

Sabrina Tom, Craig Fox, Christopher Trepel … (2007)

People typically exhibit greater sensitivity to losses than to equivalent gains when making decisions. We investigated neural correlates of loss aversion while individuals decided whether to accept or reject gambles that offered a 50/50 chance of gaining or losing money. A broad set of areas (including midbrain dopaminergic regions and their targets) showed increasing activity as potential gains increased. Potential losses were represented by decreasing activity in several of these same gain-sensitive areas. Finally, individual differences in behavioral loss aversion were predicted by a measure of neural loss aversion in several regions, including the ventral striatum and prefrontal cortex.

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Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to decision-making.

Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Antonio R. Damasio … (1999)

The somatic marker hypothesis proposes that decision-making is a process that depends on emotion. Studies have shown that damage of the ventromedial prefrontal (VMF) cortex precludes the ability to use somatic (emotional) signals that are necessary for guiding decisions in the advantageous direction. However, given the role of the amygdala in emotional processing, we asked whether amygdala damage also would interfere with decision-making. Furthermore, we asked whether there might be a difference between the roles that the amygdala and VMF cortex play in decision-making. To address these two questions, we studied a group of patients with bilateral amygdala, but not VMF, damage and a group of patients with bilateral VMF, but not amygdala, damage. We used the "gambling task" to measure decision-making performance and electrodermal activity (skin conductance responses, SCR) as an index of somatic state activation. All patients, those with amygdala damage as well as those with VMF damage, were (1) impaired on the gambling task and (2) unable to develop anticipatory SCRs while they pondered risky choices. However, VMF patients were able to generate SCRs when they received a reward or a punishment (play money), whereas amygdala patients failed to do so. In a Pavlovian conditioning experiment the VMF patients acquired a conditioned SCR to visual stimuli paired with an aversive loud sound, whereas amygdala patients failed to do so. The results suggest that amygdala damage is associated with impairment in decision-making and that the roles played by the amygdala and VMF in decision-making are different.

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Central mechanisms of stress integration: hierarchical circuitry controlling hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical responsiveness

James P Herman, Helmer Figueiredo, Nancy K. Mueller … (2003)

Appropriate regulatory control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical stress axis is essential to health and survival. The following review documents the principle extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms responsible for regulating stress-responsive CRH neurons of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus, which summate excitatory and inhibitory inputs into a net secretory signal at the pituitary gland. Regions that directly innervate these neurons are primed to relay sensory information, including visceral afferents, nociceptors and circumventricular organs, thereby promoting 'reactive' corticosteroid responses to emergent homeostatic challenges. Indirect inputs from the limbic-associated structures are capable of activating these same cells in the absence of frank physiological challenges; such 'anticipatory' signals regulate glucocorticoid release under conditions in which physical challenges may be predicted, either by innate programs or conditioned stimuli. Importantly, 'anticipatory' circuits are integrated with neural pathways subserving 'reactive' responses at multiple levels. The resultant hierarchical organization of stress-responsive neurocircuitries is capable of comparing information from multiple limbic sources with internally generated and peripherally sensed information, thereby tuning the relative activity of the adrenal cortex. Imbalances among these limbic pathways and homeostatic sensors are likely to underlie hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical dysfunction associated with numerous disease processes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date Collection: 2009

Publication date (Electronic): 1 July 2009

Volume: 4

Issue: 7

Electronic Location Identifier: e6002

Affiliations

[1]Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

University of Parma, Italy

Author notes

* E-mail: nichole.lighthall@ 123456usc.edu

Conceived and designed the experiments: NL MM. Performed the experiments: NL MAG. Analyzed the data: NL MM. Wrote the paper: NL MM MAG.

Article

Publisher ID: 08-PONE-RA-07276R3

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006002

PMC ID: 2698212

PubMed ID: 19568417

SO-VID: 908987a6-01d9-4fdd-bf5f-4565f609211d

Copyright © Lighthall et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 9 November 2008

Date accepted : 28 May 2009

Page count

Pages: 6

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Acute Stress Increases Sex Differences in Risk Seeking in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

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Abstract

Background

Methodology/Principal Findings

Conclusions/Significance

Related collections

PLOS Climate

Most cited references 32

The neural basis of loss aversion in decision-making under risk.

Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to decision-making.

Central mechanisms of stress integration: hierarchical circuitry controlling hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical responsiveness

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Author notes

Article

History

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Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 81

Cited by 73

Most referenced authors 486