# Decision-Making with Negative Costs in Stimulant Abuse

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2020 · $37,321

## Abstract

Project Summary
Chronic use of methamphetamine has been linked to disadvantageous decision-making, especially with
respect to balancing cost and potential reward. The goal of this project is to clarify the precise nature of choice
impairments in individuals with Methamphetamine Use Disorder (MUD) by characterizing their decision-making
and neural activity when reward-based decisions present different types of costs: uncertainty about the
probabilities of possible outcomes, delay in the receipt of the reward, and effort involved in making the
decision. Individuals with MUD will be compared to healthy controls during performance of two reward-based
decision tasks paired with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The first is a Probability Choice Task
that presents choices between winning $5 for sure, or gambling on a lottery that offers different amounts of
reward with varying amounts of risk. In some trials, the probability of the outcome will be known (known risk,
e.g. 50% chance of $12). In other trials, the probability of the outcome will be unknown (unknown risk, e.g.
unknown chance of $12). The second task is a Delay Discounting Task that presents choices between smaller
sooner rewards and larger later rewards. The effort involved in choosing between options on both tasks will be
estimated by modeling the difference in the subjective values between each option on a trial. The hypotheses
that individuals with MUD behave differently than healthy control participants in the face of known and
unknown risk, that differences in tolerance for known/unknown risk underlies some of the differences observed
during delay discounting tasks, and that differences will be exaggerated when choices are harder rather than
easier, will be tested (Aim 1). Differences in task-related neural activation and resting-state functional
connectivity between individuals with MUD and healthy controls, and associations with choice behavior, will be
tested (Aim 2), as will associations with methamphetamine use severity (Aim 3). Attaining a detailed
multivariate profile of behavioral and neural aspects of decision-making, and delineating the differences
between individuals with MUD and healthy controls, will help clarify which components of reward-based choice
show dysfunction in the context of the disorder, helping to identify behavioral and neural targets for
intervention.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9988398
- **Project number:** 5F31DA047110-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Zoe Rebecca Guttman
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $37,321
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2021-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9988398

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9988398, Decision-Making with Negative Costs in Stimulant Abuse (5F31DA047110-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9988398. Licensed CC0.

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