# The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex in Risky Decision-Making

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS · 2020 · $36,596

## Abstract

(7) Project Summary/Abstract
Substance use disorder is a chronic, intractable disease characterized by pathological risk-taking behavior,
which engenders ongoing drug seeking despite the risk of consequences. This proposal harnesses a rat model
to understand the neuronal activity that contributes to risky decision-making. The Risky Decision-Making Task
(RDT) offers choice between a small, safe reward and a large reward accompanied by an escalating risk of
mild foot shock. While risk-taking on average decreases with increasing risk of punishment, the RDT reveals
wide variability in risk preference, including a subpopulation of rats that consistently prefer the large reward
despite high risk of punishment. Understanding the neuronal mechanisms of this natural variability in risky
decision-making may contribute to development of treatments that target aberrant decision-making processes
in substance abusers. A likely locus of the functional activity driving risky decision-making is the orbitofrontal
cortex (OFC), an area implicated in several modalities of risk-based decision-making as well as vulnerability to
substance use. Experiments in this proposal will assess how differences in OFC processing drive individual
differences in risk-taking by measuring and manipulating OFC activity during risky decision-making. Aim one
will utilize in vivo single-unit electrophysiology to measure functional neuronal activity in OFC during risky
decision-making. Activity will be measured during a specially designed version of RDT that parses apart
distinct epochs within the decision-making process: pre-decision deliberation, and post-decision outcome
anticipation. To determine how OFC predicts individual biases in risk-taking, event-evoked OFC activity will be
compared between rats with different levels of risk preference. Aim two will utilize optogenetic inhibition to
suppress OFC activity during different epochs within risky decision-making. This will identify the causal role of
OFC in driving risk-taking, and determine if OFC modulation of risk-taking diverges as a function of risk-
preference. The experiments outlined above will both measure and manipulate OFC activity during an
understudied form of addiction-relevant risky decision-making, which may lead to novel biomarkers and/or
precise treatments for the chronic insensitivity to risk of punishment observed in addiction. In addition, this
proposal will offer a strong training component including critical technical skills, complex data analysis and
signal processing, the opportunity for multiple high impact publications, and strong mentorship from a team of
investigators at various career stages.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9991556
- **Project number:** 1F31DA050458-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
- **Principal Investigator:** Daniel Gabriel
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $36,596
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2022-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9991556

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9991556, The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex in Risky Decision-Making (1F31DA050458-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9991556. Licensed CC0.

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