Genetic Contribution to Variation in Risk Taking: A Functional MRI Twin Study of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task

Abstract

Excessive risk-taking behaviors have been implicated as a potential endophenotype for substance use disorders and psychopathological gambling. However, the genetic and environmental influences on risk taking and the risk-related brain activations remain unclear. This study investigated the heritability of risk taking and the genetic influence on individual variation in risk-related brain activation. The Balloon Analogue Risk Task was used to assess individuals’ risk-taking behavior. In a sample of 244 pairs of young adult twins, we found that there was a moderate heritability (41%) of risk taking. Using voxel-level analysis, we found a moderate genetic influence on risk-related brain activation. We also found a moderate genetic correlation between risk-taking behavior and risk-related brain activation in the left insula, right striatum, and right superior parietal lobule in the active-choice condition. The present study provides important evidence for the genetic correlation between risk-taking behavior and risk-related brain activation.

Keywords

risk taking Balloon Analogue Risk Task twin study fMRI heritability

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Akaike

(1973). Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle. In Petrov

B. N.

Caski

(Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Information Theory (pp. 267–281). Budapest, Hungary: Akademiai Kiado.

Anokhin

A. P.

Golosheykin

Grant

Heath

A. C.

(2009). Heritability of risk-taking in adolescence: A longitudinal twin study. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 12, 366–371.

Anokhin

A. P.

Grant

J. D.

Mulligan

R. C.

Heath

A. C.

(2015). The genetics of impulsivity: Evidence for the heritability of delay discounting. Biological Psychiatry, 77, 887–894.

Blokland

G. A. M.

McMahon

K. L.

Thompson

P. M.

Hickie

I. B.

Martin

N. G.

de Zubicaray

G. I.

Wright

M. J.

(2014). Genetic effects on the cerebellar role in working memory: Same brain, different genes? NeuroImage, 86, 392–403.

Burnett

Bault

Coricelli

Blakemore

S.-J.

(2010). Adolescents’ heightened risk-seeking in a probabilistic gambling task. Cognitive Development, 25, 183–196.

Cesarini

Dawes

C. T.

Johannesson

Lichtenstein

Wallace

(2009). Genetic variation in preferences for giving and risk taking. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, 809–842.

Chen

Zhang

Natsuaki

M. N.

Leve

L. D.

Harold

G. T.

. . . Ge

(2013). The Beijing Twin Study (BeTwiSt): A longitudinal study of child and adolescent development. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 16, 91–97.

Claus

E. D.

Hutchison

K. E.

(2012). Neural mechanisms of risk taking and relationships with hazardous drinking. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 36, 932–940.

Davies

Tenesa

Payton

Yang

Harris

S. E.

Liewald

. . . Deary

I. J.

(2011). Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic. Molecular Psychiatry, 16, 996–1005.

10.

Friston

K. J.

Penny

(2003). Posterior probability maps and SPMs. NeuroImage, 19, 1240–1249.

11.

Gottesman

Gould

T. D.

(2003). The endophenotype concept in psychiatry: Etymology and strategic intentions. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 636–645.

12.

Gowin

J. L.

Mackey

Paulus

M. P.

(2013). Altered risk-related processing in substance users: Imbalance of pain and gain. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 132, 13–21.

13.

Greitemeyer

Kastenmüller

Fischer

(2013). Romantic motives and risk-taking: An evolutionary approach. Journal of Risk Research, 16, 19–38.

14.

Harbaugh

Krause

Vesterlund

(2002). Risk attitudes of children and adults: Choices over small and large probability gains and losses. Experimental Economics, 5, 53–84.

15.

Hunt

M. K.

Hopko

D. R.

Bare

Lejuez

C. W.

Robinson

E. V.

(2005). Construct validity of the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART): Associations with psychopathy and impulsivity. Assessment, 12, 416–428.

16.

Josef

A. K.

Richter

Samanez-Larkin

G. R.

Wagner

G. G.

Hertwig

Mata

(2016). Stability and change in risk-taking propensity across the adult life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 430–450.

17.

Kline

R. B.

(1998). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York, NY: Guilford.

18.

Kohno

Morales

A. M.

Ghahremani

D. G.

Hellemann

London

E. D.

(2014). Risky decision making, prefrontal cortex, and mesocorticolimbic functional connectivity in methamphetamine dependence. JAMA Psychiatry, 71, 812–820.

19.

Koopmans

J. R.

Boomsma

D. I.

Heath

A. C.

van Doornen

L. J. P.

(1995). A multivariate genetic analysis of sensation seeking. Behavior Genetics, 25, 349–356.

20.

Kuhnen

C. M.

Knutson

(2005). The neural basis of financial risk taking. Neuron, 47, 763–770.

21.

Lauriola

Panno

Levin

I. P.

Lejuez

C. W.

(2014). Individual differences in risky decision making: A meta-analysis of sensation seeking and impulsivity with the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 27, 20–36.

22.

A. T.

Miller

P. W.

Slutske

W. S.

Martin

N. G.

(2010). Are attitudes towards economic risk heritable? Analyses using the Australian Twin Study of Gambling. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 13, 330–339.

23.

Lejuez

C. W.

Read

J. P.

Kahler

C. W.

Richards

J. B.

Ramsey

S. E.

Stuart

G. L.

. . . Brown

R. A.

(2002). Evaluation of a behavioral measure of risk taking: The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 75–84.

24.

Loehlin

J. C.

(1996). The Cholesky approach: A cautionary note. Behavior Genetics, 26, 65–69.

25.

Martin

N. G.

Eaves

L. J.

Kearsey

M. J.

Davies

(1978). The power of the classical twin study. Heredity, 40, 97–116.

26.

Mohr

P. N. C.

Biele

Heekeren

H. R.

(2010). Neural processing of risk. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 6613–6619.

27.

Neale

M. C.

Cardon

L. R.

(1992). Methodology for genetic studies of twins and families. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

28.

Plomin

DeFries

J. C.

McClearn

G. E.

Rutter

(2001). Behavioral genetics. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.

29.

Rao

Korczykowski

Pluta

Hoang

Detre

J. A.

(2008). Neural correlates of voluntary and involuntary risk taking in the human brain: An fMRI study of the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART). NeuroImage, 42, 902–910.

30.

Rao

Mamikonyan

Detre

J. A.

Siderowf

A. D.

Stern

M. B.

Potenza

M. N.

Weintraub

(2010). Decreased ventral striatal activity with impulse control disorders in Parkinson’s disease. Movement Disorders, 25, 1660–1669.

31.

Rao

L.-L.

Zhou

Liang

Z.-Y.

Rao

Zheng

Sun

. . . Li

(2014). Decreasing ventromedial prefrontal cortex deactivation in risky decision making after simulated microgravity: Effects of −6 degree head-down tilt bed rest. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, Article 187. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00187

32.

R Core Team. (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org

33.

Schneider

Eschman

Zuccolotto

(2012). E-Prime 2.0 reference guide manual. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools.

34.

Schonberg

Fox

C. R.

Mumford

J. A.

Congdon

Trepel

Poldrack

R. A.

(2012). Decreasing ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity during sequential risk-taking: An fMRI investigation of the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6, Article 80. doi:10.3389/fnins.2012.00080

35.

Vinkhuyzen

A. A. E.

Pedersen

N. L.

Yang

Lee

S. H.

Magnusson

P. K. E.

Iacono

W. G.

. . . Wray

N. R.

(2012). Common SNPs explain some of the variation in the personality dimensions of neuroticism and extraversion. Translational Psychiatry, 2, Article e102. doi:10.1038/tp.2012.27

36.

Wang

X. T.

Zheng

Xuan

Y.-H.

Chen

(2016). Not all risks are created equal: A twin study and meta-analyses of risk taking across seven domains. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1548–1560.

37.

Weber

E. U.

Blais

A.-R.

Betz

(2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 263–290.

38.

Yang

Benyamin

McEvoy

B. P.

Gordon

Henders

A. K.

Nyholt

D. R.

. . . Visscher

P. M.

(2010). Common SNPs explain a large proportion of heritability for human height. Nature Genetics, 42, 565–569.

39.

Yang

Zeng

Goddard

M. E.

Wray

N. R.

Visscher

P. M.

(2017). Concepts, estimation and interpretation of SNP-based heritability. Nature Genetics, 49, 1304–1311.

40.

Zhang

Chen

(1990). Gan jue xun qiu liang biao dui wo guo bei shi de ce ding ji yin su fen xi [Test of Sensation Seeking Scale in Chinese subjects and its factor analysis]. Journal of Psychological Science, 4, 1–6. doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.1990.04.001

41.

Zuckerman

Eysenck

H. J.

(1978). Sensation seeking in England and America: Cross-cultural, age, and sex comparisons. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 139–149.

42.

Zyphur

M. J.

Narayanan

Arvey

R. D.

Alexander

G. J.

(2009). The genetics of economic risk preferences. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22, 367–377.