Decision Making Study in Young and Middle-Aged Adults: Part II

Financial decisions are made during pre-retirement age that can influence financial well-being for the rest of an individual's life. This proposal aims to construct a more comprehensive model of the specific psychological and neural mechanisms that support financial decisions in young adulthood and late middle age. In Part 1 of this study (covered in Institutional Review Board (IRB) # 141812), middle-age and young adults complete basic cognitive, motivational, and decision making tasks and are studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine the relation between neural circuit activation and individual and age-related differences in decision making. In part II of the study, aspects of dopamine functioning are studied using positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to determine whether individual differences in dopamine functions are related to the decision-making and fMRI measures collected in Part 1 of the study. Dopamine measures include baseline D2 receptor availability, amphetamine induced dopamine release and dopamine transporter (DAT) levels, which provides a more comprehensive evaluation of dopamine functions than in prior studies linking individual differences in dopamine to behavioral, cognitive or decision-making traits.