Pairing facts with imagined consequences improves pandemic-related risk perception.

The COVID-19 pandemic reached staggering new peaks during a global resurgence more than a year after the crisis began. Although public health guidelines initially helped to slow the spread of disease, widespread pandemic fatigue and prolonged harm to financial stability and mental well-being contributed to this resurgence. In the late stage of the pandemic, it became clear that new interventions were needed to support long-term behavior change. Here, we examined subjective perceived risk about COVID-19 and the relationship between perceived risk and engagement in risky behaviors. In study 1 (n = 303), we found that subjective perceived risk was likely inaccurate but predicted compliance with public health guidelines. In study 2 (n = 735), we developed a multifaceted intervention designed to realign perceived risk with actual risk. Participants completed an episodic simulation task; we expected that imagining a COVID-related scenario would increase the salience of risk information and enhance behavior change. Immediately following the episodic simulation, participants completed a risk estimation task with individualized feedback about local viral prevalence. We found that information prediction error, a measure of surprise, drove beneficial change in perceived risk and willingness to engage in risky activities. Imagining a COVID-related scenario beforehand enhanced the effect of prediction error on learning. Importantly, our intervention produced lasting effects that persisted after a 1- to 3-wk delay. Overall, we describe a fast and feasible online intervention that effectively changed beliefs and intentions about risky behaviors.

Reasons for Receiving or Not Receiving Bivalent COVID-19 Booster Vaccinations Among Adults - United States, November 1-December 10, 2022.

Bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccines, developed to protect against both ancestral and Omicron BA.4/BA.5 variants, are recommended to increase protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe disease* (1,2). However, relatively few eligible U.S. adults have received a bivalent booster dose (3), and reasons for low coverage are unclear. An opt-in Internet survey of 1,200 COVID-19-vaccinated U.S. adults was conducted to assess reasons for receiving or not receiving a bivalent booster dose. Participants could select multiple reasons from a list of suggested reasons to report why they had or had not received a bivalent booster dose. The most common reasons cited for not receiving the bivalent booster dose were lack of awareness of eligibility for vaccination (23.2%) or of vaccine availability (19.3%), and perceived immunity against infection (18.9%). After viewing information about eligibility and availability, 67.8% of participants who had not received the bivalent booster dose indicated that they planned to do so; in a follow-up survey 1 month later, 28.6% of these participants reported having received the dose. Among those who had planned to receive the booster dose but had not yet done so, 82.6% still intended to do so. Participants who had still not received the booster dose most commonly reported being too busy to get vaccinated (35.6%). To help increase bivalent booster dose coverage, health care and public health professionals should use evidence-based strategies to convey information about booster vaccination recommendations and waning immunity (4), while also working to increase convenient access.

Individual Differences in Dopamine Are Associated with Reward Discounting in Clinical Groups But Not in Healthy Adults.

Some people are more willing to make immediate, risky, or costly reward-focused choices than others, which has been hypothesized to be associated with individual differences in dopamine (DA) function. In two studies using PET imaging, one empirical (Study 1: N = 144 males and females across 3 samples) and one meta-analytic (Study 2: N = 307 across 12 samples), we sought to characterize associations between individual differences in DA and time, probability, and physical effort discounting in human adults. Study 1 demonstrated that individual differences in DA D2-like receptors were not associated with time or probability discounting of monetary rewards in healthy humans, and associations with physical effort discounting were inconsistent across adults of different ages. Meta-analytic results for temporal discounting corroborated our empirical finding for minimal effect of DA measures on discounting in healthy individuals but suggested that associations between individual differences in DA and reward discounting depend on clinical features. Addictions were characterized by negative correlations between DA and discounting, but other clinical conditions, such as Parkinson's disease, obesity, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, were characterized by positive correlations between DA and discounting. Together, the results suggest that trait differences in discounting in healthy adults do not appear to be strongly associated with individual differences in D2-like receptors. The difference in meta-analytic correlation effects between healthy controls and individuals with psychopathology suggests that individual difference findings related to DA and reward discounting in clinical samples may not be reliably generalized to healthy controls, and vice versa.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Decisions to forgo large rewards for smaller ones due to increasing time delays, uncertainty, or physical effort have been linked to differences in dopamine (DA) function, which is disrupted in some forms of psychopathology. It remains unclear whether alterations in DA function associated with psychopathology also extend to explaining associations between DA function and decision making in healthy individuals. We show that individual differences in DA D2 receptor availability are not consistently related to monetary discounting of time, probability, or physical effort in healthy individuals across a broad age range. By contrast, we suggest that psychopathology accounts for observed inconsistencies in the relationship between measures of DA function and reward discounting behavior.

Decision making in the ageing brain: changes in affective and motivational circuits.

As the global population ages, older decision makers will be required to take greater responsibility for their own physical, psychological and financial well-being. With this in mind, researchers have begun to examine the effects of ageing on decision making and associated neural circuits. A new 'affect-integration-motivation' (AIM) framework may help to clarify how affective and motivational circuits support decision making. Recent research has shed light on whether and how ageing influences these circuits, providing an interdisciplinary account of how ageing can alter decision making.

Differential regional decline in dopamine receptor availability across adulthood: Linear and nonlinear effects of age.

Theories of adult brain development, based on neuropsychological test results and structural neuroimaging, suggest differential rates of age-related change in function across cortical and subcortical sub-regions. However, it remains unclear if these trends also extend to the aging dopamine system. Here we examined cross-sectional adult age differences in estimates of D2-like receptor binding potential across several cortical and subcortical brain regions using PET imaging and the radiotracer [18 F]Fallypride in two samples of healthy human adults (combined N = 132). After accounting for regional differences in overall radioligand binding, estimated percent difference in receptor binding potential by decade (linear effects) were highest in most temporal and frontal cortical regions (~6-16% per decade), moderate in parahippocampal gyrus, pregenual frontal cortex, fusiform gyrus, caudate, putamen, thalamus, and amygdala (~3-5%), and weakest in subcallosal frontal cortex, ventral striatum, pallidum, and hippocampus (~0-2%). Some regions showed linear effects of age while many showed curvilinear effects such that binding potential declined from young adulthood to middle age and then was relatively stable until old age. Overall, these data indicate that the rate and pattern of decline in D2 receptor availability is regionally heterogeneous. However, the differences across regions were challenging to organize within existing theories of brain development and did not show the same pattern of regional change that has been observed in gray matter volume, white matter integrity, or cognitive performance. This variation suggests that existing theories of adult brain development may need to be modified to better account for the spatial dynamics of dopaminergic system aging.

Emotion identification across adulthood using the Dynamic FACES database of emotional expressions in younger, middle aged, and older adults.

Facial stimuli are widely used in behavioural and brain science research to investigate emotional facial processing. However, some studies have demonstrated that dynamic expressions elicit stronger emotional responses compared to static images. To address the need for more ecologically valid and powerful facial emotional stimuli, we created Dynamic FACES, a database of morphed videos (n = 1026) from younger, middle-aged, and older adults displaying naturalistic emotional facial expressions (neutrality, sadness, disgust, fear, anger, happiness). To assess adult age differences in emotion identification of dynamic stimuli and to provide normative ratings for this modified set of stimuli, healthy adults (n = 1822, age range 18-86 years) categorised for each video the emotional expression displayed, rated the expression distinctiveness, estimated the age of the face model, and rated the naturalness of the expression. We found few age differences in emotion identification when using dynamic stimuli. Only for angry faces did older adults show lower levels of identification accuracy than younger adults. Further, older adults outperformed middle-aged adults' in identification of sadness. The use of dynamic facial emotional stimuli has previously been limited, but Dynamic FACES provides a large database of high-resolution naturalistic, dynamic expressions across adulthood. Information on using Dynamic FACES for research purposes can be found at http://faces.mpib-berlin.mpg.de .

Distinct neural circuits support incentivized inhibition.

The ability to inhibit responses under high stakes, or "incentivized inhibition," is critical for adaptive impulse control. While previous research indicates that right ventrolateral prefrontal cortical (VLPFC) activity plays a key role in response inhibition, less research has addressed how incentives might influence this circuit. By combining a novel behavioral task, functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), we targeted and characterized specific neural circuits that support incentivized inhibition. Behaviorally, large incentives enhanced responses to obtain money, but also reduced response inhibition. Functionally, activity in both right VLPFC and right anterior insula (AIns) predicted successful inhibition for high incentives. Structurally, characterization of a novel white-matter tract connecting the right AIns and VLPFC revealed an association of tract coherence with incentivized inhibition performance. Finally, individual differences in right VLPFC activity statistically mediated the association of right AIns-VLPFC tract coherence with incentivized inhibition performance. These multimodal findings bridge brain structure, brain function, and behavior to clarify how individuals can inhibit impulses, even in the face of high stakes.

Individual differences in dopamine D2 receptor availability correlate with reward valuation.

Reward valuation, which underlies all value-based decision-making, has been associated with dopamine function in many studies of nonhuman animals, but there is relatively less direct evidence for an association in humans. Here, we measured dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) availability in vivo in humans to examine relations between individual differences in dopamine receptor availability and neural activity associated with a measure of reward valuation, expected value (i.e., the product of reward magnitude and the probability of obtaining the reward). Fourteen healthy adult subjects underwent PET with [18F]fallypride, a radiotracer with strong affinity for DRD2, and fMRI (on a separate day) while performing a reward valuation task. [18F]fallypride binding potential, reflecting DRD2 availability, in the midbrain correlated positively with neural activity associated with expected value, specifically in the left ventral striatum/caudate. The present results provide in vivo evidence from humans showing midbrain dopamine characteristics are associated with reward valuation.

Reduced effects of age on dopamine D2 receptor levels in physically active adults.

Physical activity has been shown to ameliorate dopaminergic degeneration in non-human animal models. However, the effects of regular physical activity on normal age-related changes in dopamine function in humans are unknown. Here we present cross-sectional data from forty-four healthy human subjects between 23 and 80 years old, showing that typical age-related dopamine D2 receptor loss, assessed with PET [18F]fallypride, was significantly reduced in physically active adults compared to less active adults.

Individual differences in skewed financial risk-taking across the adult life span.

Older adults are disproportionately targeted by fraud schemes that advertise unlikely but large returns (positively skewed risks). We examined adult age differences in choice and neural activity as individuals considered risky gambles. Gambles were symmetric (50% chance of modest win or loss), positively skewed (25% chance of large gain), or negatively skewed (25% chance of large loss). The willingness to accept positively skewed relative to symmetric gambles increased with age, and this effect replicated in an independent behavioral study. Whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses comparing positively (vs. negatively) skewed trials revealed that relative to younger adults, older adults showed increased anticipatory activity for negatively skewed gambles but reduced activity for positively skewed gambles in the anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal regions. Individuals who were more biased toward positively skewed gambles showed increased activity in a network of regions including the nucleus accumbens. These results reveal age biases toward positively skewed gambles and age differences in corticostriatal regions during skewed risk-taking, and have implications for identifying financial decision biases across adulthood.

Associations between dopamine D2 receptor availability and BMI depend on age.

OBJECTIVE: The dopamine D2/3 receptor subtypes (DRD2/3) are the most widely studied neurotransmitter biomarker in research on obesity, but results to date have been inconsistent, have typically involved small samples, and have rarely accounted for subjects' ages despite the large impact of age on DRD2/3 levels. We aimed to clarify the relation between DRD2/3 availability and BMI by examining this association in a large sample of subjects with BMI spanning the continuum from underweight to extremely obese. SUBJECTS: 130 healthy subjects between 18 and 81years old underwent PET with [18F]fallypride, a high affinity DRD2/3 ligand. RESULTS: As expected, DRD2/3 availability declined with age. Critically, age significantly interacted with DRD2/3 availability in predicting BMI in the midbrain and striatal regions (caudate, putamen, and ventral striatum). Among subjects under 30years old, BMI was not associated with DRD2/3 availability. By contrast, among subjects over 30years old, BMI was positively associated with DRD2/3 availability in the midbrain, putamen, and ventral striatum. CONCLUSION: The present results are incompatible with the prominent dopaminergic hypofunction hypothesis that proposes that a reduction in DRD2/3 availability is associated with increased BMI, and highlights the importance of age in assessing correlates of DRD2/3 function.

Affective traits link to reliable neural markers of incentive anticipation.

While theorists have speculated that different affective traits are linked to reliable brain activity during anticipation of gains and losses, few have directly tested this prediction. We examined these associations in a community sample of healthy human adults (n=52) as they played a Monetary Incentive Delay task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Factor analysis of personality measures revealed that subjects independently varied in trait Positive Arousal and trait Negative Arousal. In a subsample (n=14) retested over 2.5years later, left nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activity during anticipation of large gains (+$5.00) and right anterior insula activity during anticipation of large losses (-$5.00) showed significant test-retest reliability (intraclass correlations>0.50, p's<0.01). In the full sample (n=52), trait Positive Arousal correlated with individual differences in left NAcc activity during anticipation of large gains, while trait Negative Arousal correlated with individual differences in right anterior insula activity during anticipation of large losses. Associations of affective traits with neural activity were not attributable to the influence of other potential confounds (including sex, age, wealth, and motion). Together, these results demonstrate selective links between distinct affective traits and reliably-elicited activity in neural circuits associated with anticipation of gain versus loss. The findings thus reveal neural markers for affective dimensions of healthy personality, and potentially for related psychiatric symptoms.

Adult age differences in frontostriatal representation of prediction error but not reward outcome.

Emerging evidence from decision neuroscience suggests that although younger and older adults show similar frontostriatal representations of reward magnitude, older adults often show deficits in feedback-driven reinforcement learning. In the present study, healthy adults completed reward-based tasks that did or did not depend on probabilistic learning, while undergoing functional neuroimaging. We observed reductions in the frontostriatal representation of prediction errors during probabilistic learning in older adults. In contrast, we found evidence for stability across adulthood in the representation of reward outcome in a task that did not require learning. Together, the results identify changes across adulthood in the dynamic coding of relational representations of feedback, in spite of preserved reward sensitivity in old age. Overall, the results suggest that the neural representation of prediction error, but not reward outcome, is reduced in old age. These findings reveal a potential dissociation between cognition and motivation with age and identify a potential mechanism for explaining changes in learning-dependent decision making in old adulthood.

Mechanisms of motivation-cognition interaction: challenges and opportunities.

Recent years have seen a rejuvenation of interest in studies of motivation-cognition interactions arising from many different areas of psychology and neuroscience. The present issue of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience provides a sampling of some of the latest research from a number of these different areas. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the current state of the field, in terms of key research developments and candidate neural mechanisms receiving focused investigation as potential sources of motivation-cognition interaction. However, our primary goal is conceptual: to highlight the distinct perspectives taken by different research areas, in terms of how motivation is defined, the relevant dimensions and dissociations that are emphasized, and the theoretical questions being targeted. Together, these distinctions present both challenges and opportunities for efforts aiming toward a more unified and cross-disciplinary approach. We identify a set of pressing research questions calling for this sort of cross-disciplinary approach, with the explicit goal of encouraging integrative and collaborative investigations directed toward them.

Preserved memory for decisions across adulthood.

Remembering our decisions is crucial - it allows us to learn from past mistakes and construct future behavior. However, it is unclear if age-related memory declines impact the memorability of older adults' decisions. Here, we compared younger and older adults' ability to remember their decisions. In Studies 1 and 2, participants made choices between two objects based on their star rating (shopping context) or circle count (neutral context) and later remembered what they chose. while Study 3 tested participants' memory for active vs. passive decisions. Overall, we found no evidence for age differences in the ability to remember decisions. Furthermore, age did not interact with context - both similarly benefitted from making and remembering their decisions in a more shopping-like context. These results reveal an aspect of cognition that appears to be preserved in healthy aging. Highlighting such aspects can help improve older adults' self-perceptions and reframe the narrative around aging.

Adult Age Differences in Evoked Emotional Responses to Dynamic Facial Expressions.

OBJECTIVES: Facial expressions are powerful social signals that motivate feelings and actions in the observer. Research on face processing has overwhelmingly used static facial images, which have limited ecological validity. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience different evoked emotional responses to facial expressions than younger adults. Here, we introduce a new method to explore age-related differences in evoked responses to dynamic facial expressions across adulthood. METHODS: We used dynamic facial expressions which varied by expression type (happy, sad, and angry) and expression magnitude (low, medium, and full) to gather participant ratings on their evoked emotional response to these stimuli along the dimensions of valence (positive vs negative) and arousal. RESULTS: As predicted, older adults rated the emotions evoked by positive facial expressions (happy) more positively than younger adults. Furthermore, older adults rated the emotion evoked by negative facial expressions (angry and sad) more negatively than younger adults. Contrary to our predictions, older adults did not differ significantly in arousal to negative expressions compared with younger adults. Across all ages, individuals rated positive expressions as more arousing than negative expressions. DISCUSSION: The findings provide some evidence that older adults may be more sensitive to variations in dynamic facial expressions than younger adults, particularly in terms of their estimates of valence. These dynamic facial stimuli that vary in magnitude are promising for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.

Adult age-related differences in susceptibility to social conformity pressures in self-control over daily desires.

Developmental literature suggests that susceptibility to social conformity pressure peaks in adolescence and disappears with maturity into early adulthood. Predictions about these behaviors are less clear for middle-aged and older adults. On the one hand, while age-related increases in prioritization of socioemotional goals might predict greater susceptibility to social conformity pressures, aging is also associated with enhanced emotion regulation that could support resistance to conformity pressures. In this exploratory research study, we used mobile experience sampling surveys to naturalistically track how 157 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 80 practice self-control over spontaneous desires in daily life. Many of these desires were experienced in the presence of others enacting that desire. Results showed that middle-aged and older adults were better at controlling their desires than younger adults when desires were experienced in the presence of others enacting that desire. Consistent with the literature on improved emotion regulation with age, these results provide evidence that the ability to resist social conformity pressure is enhanced across the adult life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking.

Communicating information about health risks empowers individuals to make informed decisions. To identify effective communication strategies, we manipulated the specificity, self-relevance, and emotional framing of messages designed to motivate information seeking about COVID-19 exposure risk. In Study 1 (N=221,829), we conducted a large-scale social media field study. Using Facebook advertisements, we targeted users by age and political attitudes. Episodic specificity drove engagement: Advertisements that contextualized risk in specific scenarios produced the highest click-through rates, across all demographic groups. In Study 2, we replicated and extended our findings in an online experiment (N=4,233). Message specificity (but not self-relevance or emotional valence) drove interest in learning about COVID-19 risks. Across both studies, we found that older adults and liberals were more interested in learning about COVID-19 risks. However, message specificity increased engagement across demographic groups. Overall, evoking specific scenarios motivated information seeking about COVID-19, facilitating risk communication to a broad audience.

Frontostriatal white matter integrity mediates adult age differences in probabilistic reward learning.

Frontostriatal circuits have been implicated in reward learning, and emerging findings suggest that frontal white matter structural integrity and probabilistic reward learning are reduced in older age. This cross-sectional study examined whether age differences in frontostriatal white matter integrity could account for age differences in reward learning in a community life span sample of human adults. By combining diffusion tensor imaging with a probabilistic reward learning task, we found that older age was associated with decreased reward learning and decreased white matter integrity in specific pathways running from the thalamus to the medial prefrontal cortex and from the medial prefrontal cortex to the ventral striatum. Further, white matter integrity in these thalamocorticostriatal paths could statistically account for age differences in learning. These findings suggest that the integrity of frontostriatal white matter pathways critically supports reward learning. The findings also raise the possibility that interventions that bolster frontostriatal integrity might improve reward learning and decision making.

Heuristic decision-making across adulthood.

In general, research on aging and decision-making has grown in recent years. Yet, little work has investigated how reliance on classic heuristics may differ across adulthood. For example, younger adults rely on the availability of information from memory when judging the relative frequency of plane crashes versus car accidents, but it is unclear if older adults are similarly reliant on this heuristic. In the present study, participants aged 20-90 years old made judgments that could be answered by relying on five different heuristics: anchoring, availability, recognition, representativeness, and sunk-cost bias. We found no evidence of age-related differences in the use of the classic heuristics-younger and older adults employed anchoring, availability, recognition, and representativeness to equal degrees in order to make decisions. However, replicating past work, we found age-related differences in the sunk-cost bias-older adults were more likely to avoid this fallacy compared to younger adults. We explain these different patterns by drawing on the distinctive roles that stored knowledge and personal experience likely play across heuristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).