Novelty and uncertainty differentially drive exploration across development.

Across the lifespan, individuals frequently choose between exploiting known rewarding options or exploring unknown alternatives. A large body of work has suggested that children may explore more than adults. However, because novelty and reward uncertainty are often correlated, it is unclear how they differentially influence decision-making across development. Here, children, adolescents, and adults (ages 8-27 years, N = 122) completed an adapted version of a recently developed value-guided decision-making task that decouples novelty and uncertainty. In line with prior studies, we found that exploration decreased with increasing age. Critically, participants of all ages demonstrated a similar bias to select choice options with greater novelty, whereas aversion to reward uncertainty increased into adulthood. Computational modeling of participant choices revealed that whereas adolescents and adults demonstrated attenuated uncertainty aversion for more novel choice options, children's choices were not influenced by reward uncertainty.

Liver transplantation in patients with a history of migration-A German single center comparative analysis.

Liver transplant (LT) programs in Germany increasingly face a multiethnic patient population. To date no outcome data for LT in patients with a history of migration is available for Germany. This complicates decision-making before wait-listing such patients. We conducted a single-center cohort analysis of all primary LT between April 2007 and December 2015, stratified for the history of migration to investigate differences in the outcome. We found transplant rates resembling the proportion of persons with a history of migration in the general public in the region of our center. Differences were found concerning age at LT and prevalence of underlying diseases. Re-Transplant rates, Kaplan-Meier Estimates for overall survival, also after stratification for viral hepatitis, sex, ethnicity or presence of a language-barrier showed no statistical differences. The multivariate analysis showed no migration-related covariate associated with a negative outcome. These results stand in contrast to most of the previous evidence from North America and the UK and need to be taken into consideration during the wait-listing process of patients with a history of migration in need of a LT in centers in the Eurotransplant region.