State-dependent interoception, value-based decision-making, and introspection

National Institute Of Mental Health

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

In the last fiscal year, Dr. Lopez-Guzman has continued to grow her newly established Unit on Computational Decision Neuroscience. She has focused on staff recruitment, protocol approval, piloting, and participant recruitment. Protocol MH000978 is a large study we are conducting in the clinic (laboratory), aimed at understanding how stress, pain, and emotion induce acute (momentary) changes in decision-making (valuation) and metacognition (confidence). Participants complete decision-making and metacognition tasks after inducing a perturbation of their state (a negative valence state). We perform the experiment also in the fMRI scanner to explore how brain activity in prefrontal cortex and other cortical and subcortical areas such as the insula, amygdala, and basal ganglia is modified by negative states during decision-making.