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Brain Scan Might Reveal Appetite for Risk

Here's the gamble: Twenty bucks¹ guaranteed…or a 50/50 chance of winning sixty bucks?Which would you choose?

赌博游戏规则：20块钱押宝...或50/50赢取60块钱的机会?你会选择哪一个?

The answer might actually be evident in a brain scan, according to a study in which researchers posed actual terms like that to 108 young adults—and the stakes were real. The initial choice and then the outcome if they picked the bet determined² how much they'd walk away with, after the study. The research is in the journal Neuron.

根据一项研究，研究人员给108名年轻成人，提供了赌博实际情况——风险是真实的，研究结果可在脑部扫描中一目了然。研究结束后，如果他们选择了赌注，最初的选择以及结果决定了他们会走多远。该研究结果发表在Neuron杂志上。

"It does work out in our favor that people are risk averse³ because it means on average we're going to be paying people less." Joe Kable, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. After he and his team recorded the subjects' appetite for risk, they scanned their brains using various techniques that visualize⁴ anatomy⁵ and real-time activity.

“它确实对我们有利，人们有规避风险的意识，因为它意味着平均而言，我们将减少支付人员的费用。”宾州大学的心理学家和神经科学家Joe Kable说。在他和团队记录了受试者对风险的评估之后，他们用各种可视化解剖技术和实时活动技术扫描了受试者的大脑。

And they found that individuals who were willing to throw the sure-thing $20 away for the chance of a higher payout were more likely to have larger amygdalas—that’s a region associated with processing fear, and weighing risk versus⁶ reward. They also saw in the gamblers' brains more synchronized⁷ activity between the amygdala and another region, called the medial prefrontal cortex. But there were fewer physical, white matter, connections between those two regions. Which might seem paradoxical.

他们发现，愿意为获得更高支出而抛出20美元保证金的人，更有可能拥有更大的神经区域——这是一个与处理恐惧有关的区域，并且重视风险与奖励。他们还在赌徒的大脑中，看到了这一区域与另一个区域(称为内侧前额叶皮层)之间的更多同步活动。但是，这两个区域之间的物理白质连接较少，这似乎有点矛盾。

"To a first pass intuition you might expect, well, shouldn't these two be going together?" But Kable explains that even though you start out life with lots of those white matter connections, they tend to get trimmed and refined during development. So fewer physical connections between regions could actually indicate a more mature, more developed synchronization⁸ of activity between them.

“你可能期望第一次传输的直觉，那么这两个人不应该在一起吗?”但Kable解释说，即使你开始了大量的这些白质连接的生活，他们往往会在开发过程中，得到修整和细化。因此，区域之间较少的物理连接，实际上可以表明它们之间更加成熟，更发达的同步活动。

"It's possible within the population that we see of healthy young adults, a more pruned⁹ structural¹⁰ connection between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex is indicative of a more developed connection and one that might be more effective or efficient, and thus lead to greater communication between the two areas."

“在我们看到的健康青年人群中，这一神经核与内侧前额叶皮层之间，更加紧密结构，可能表明了更加发达的联系，并且可能更有效，从而在两个地区之间有更多的交流。”

This type of scanning to predict behavior is in its infancy¹¹ now. But down the line? "I can imagine it being used to help steer¹² people to what the right place to put their money is when they're investing." And the study also hints at the fact that brain scans might reveal a lot more about your attitudes and your behavior than you might think. A good thing to keep in mind.

这种预测行为的扫描方式，目前还处于初级阶段。但是接下来呢?“我可以想象，它被用来帮助人们在他们投资时，把钱投入到正确的地方。” 这项研究还暗示了这样一个事实：即大脑扫描可能会比你想象的更多地揭示你的态度和行为。记住好事请。