You do not have to act to be impulsive: Brain resting-state activity predicts performance and impulsivity on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

Claudio Gentili; Nicola Vanello; Ioana Podina; Raluca Popita; Bogdan Voinescu; Pietro Pietrini; Daniel David

doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112395

You do not have to act to be impulsive: Brain resting-state activity predicts performance and impulsivity on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

Behav Brain Res. 2020 Feb 3:379:112395. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112395. Epub 2019 Nov 28.

Authors

Claudio Gentili¹, Nicola Vanello², Ioana Podina³, Raluca Popita⁴, Bogdan Voinescu⁵, Pietro Pietrini⁶, Daniel David⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy. Electronic address: c.gentili@unipd.it.
² Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania.
⁴ Department of Radiology, The Oncology Institute "Prof. Dr. Ion Chiricuta" (IOCN), Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
⁵ Centre for Academic Mental Health, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK; Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
⁶ IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy.
⁷ Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA.

PMID: 31786275
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112395

Abstract

Objective: Impulsivity is a key, trait-like feature of the decision-making process. As personality traits are stable over time, we hypothesized that resting-state (RS) neural activity would predict individual impulsivity.

Methods: Thirty-five healthy individuals underwent fMRI scan during RS and subsequently performed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). In BART, impulsivity was inversely correlated to monetary earnings. A group-level whole-brain regression assessed the relationship between earnings at BART and RS evaluated by the Hurst Exponent, regional homogeneity; low frequency oscillation (LFO), (including the Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations - ALFF- and the fractional Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations -fALFF) and the Default Mode Network (DMN) functional connectivity.

Results: ALFF significantly correlates with total earnings in the ventral part of the ACC/MPFC (FWE corrected p < 0.05 (uncorrected p value <0.0005; cluster size: ≥10 voxels), while H significantly correlates with total earnings in the anterior insula and the part opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus.

Conclusions: These results suggest that impulsivity and ability to change strategies according to external cues are trait characteristics shaped in the RS's functional architecture that can be detected also when individuals are not engaged in decision-making tasks.

Keywords: Basal ganglia; Decision making; Impulsivity; Reward; fMRI resting-state.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Cerebral Cortex / diagnostic imaging
Cerebral Cortex / physiology*
Connectome*
Decision Making / physiology*
Default Mode Network / diagnostic imaging
Default Mode Network / physiology*
Female
Humans
Impulsive Behavior / physiology*
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Nerve Net / diagnostic imaging
Nerve Net / physiology*
Psychomotor Performance / physiology*
Reward*
Young Adult