Effects of acute stress on risky decision-making are related to neuroticism: An fMRI study of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

Background: Decision making under acute stress is frequent in daily life. While evidence suggests for a modulatory role of neuroticism on risky decision-making behaviors, the neural correlates underlying the association between neuroticism and risky decision-making under acute stress remain to be elucidated.

Methods: Based on a modified Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) with concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging, we evaluated the effect of acute stress on risk-taking behavior in 27 healthy male adults, and further assessed stress-induced changes in brain activation according to the individual differences in neuroticism.

Results: Higher trait neuroticism levels positively correlated with increased stress-modulated activation of the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during risk-taking, and negatively correlated with decreased stress-modulated activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during cash-outs.

Limitations: Only male participants were recruited.

Conclusions: We found a positive correlation between neuroticism and greater risk-taking behavior under acute stress. These results extend our understanding of the increased risk-taking propensity in high neurotic individuals under acute stress.