Thomas Kroker, Miroslaw Wyczesany, Maimu Alissa Rehbein, Kati Roesmann, Ida Wessing, Anja Wiegand, Jens Bölte, Markus Junghöfer
Humans are subject to a variety of cognitive biases, such as the framing-effect or the gambler's fallacy, that lead to decisions unfitting of a purely rational agent. Previous studies have shown that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a key role in making rational decisions and that stronger vmPFC activity is associated with attenuated cognitive biases. Accordingly, dysfunctions of the vmPFC are associated with impulsive decisions and pathological gambling. By applying a gambling paradigm in a between-subjects design with 33 healthy adults, we demonstrate that vmPFC excitation via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) reduces the framing-effect and the gambler's fallacy compared to sham stimulation...
October 20, 2023: Scientific Reports