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A woman plays slot at Tropicana Casino and the Atlantic City, New Jersey complex. Scientists who have trained Rhesus monkeys to play drinking water say their findings could potentially inform risk behavior in humans. (Wayne Parry / AP)
Like most rhesus monkeys, Aragorn is small and intelligent. Unlike most of his peers, Aragorn is also a practicing player.
It is one of the rhesus monkeys – all named after the characters of "Lord of the Rings" – that neuroscientist Veit Stuphorn of Johns Hopkins University trained to achieve what is officially known as the name of "risk decision making". these choices take place in the brain. And in a According to a new study, Stuphorn claims that his laboratory's game monkeys have discovered that a brain area is associated with high-risk tendencies – a discovery that could eventually help scientists better understand this behavior at home. man.
Stuphorn started working with monkeys about ten years ago, and Aragorn was the first. Although the research is not about poker or blackjack, it was nonetheless illustrative.
Veit begins by teaching the monkey to understand color schemes and probabilities. Then the monkey is placed in front of a computer screen and presented with two square boxes: one on the left and another of the same size on the right. Inside each box are colors – red, blue, green or blue-green, called cyan – that correspond to increasing rewards. In this case, the monkey plays to drink water.
The proportion of colors in the box indicates the probability of a particular gain. For example, a fully blue box guarantees an average amount of water. A box that contains 80% cyan and 20% green indicates a high probability of getting small amounts of water, but a low probability of getting a lot of water. At each turn, the monkey must choose between two options.
"The monkey used his eyes to make the choice," said Stuphorn, explaining that researchers use sensors to track the eye movements of the animal. Regardless of which box on which his gaze indicates the choice of the animal, the monkey receives the corresponding reward – more water if the bet is profitable, less if it is not the case. The tests lasted until the monkey filled with water or was bored, which is sometimes very clear, Stuphorn said.
"They close their eyes and snore," he said.
Over many sessions and thousands of rehearsals, Stuphorn and his colleagues found that monkeys were risk takers: they regularly chose to play for more water than to settle for less. Stuphorn said these initial findings were consistent with what other researchers in the field had seen. Five years ago, Xiaomo Chen, a graduate student of Stuphorn and Hopkins at the time, decided to advance the work.
For their recent study, scientists have focused on a portion of the frontal cortex of the brain called the Extra Eye Field (SEF), an area that helps control movement and that their previous research also indicated risky behavior. But the details were murky, so they decided to see what would happen if they turned off the SEF.
Chen and Stuphorn worked with Aragorn and another monkey named Isildur. By placing tiny metal plates on the SEF region of the monkey brain, they cooled the tissue until it became inactive. (Stuphorn said the process is harmless and reversible, and that other scientists have used it in previous studies.)
"If it really has an impact, the monkey's behavior should change," Stuphorn said.
Then, the monkeys returned to the game and their behavior actually changed. After a few minutes of cooling, the SEF became inactive and Aragorn and Isildur suddenly became much less likely to take the riskiest bets.
"The preference for uncertainty has been reduced," and significantly, Stuphorn said. "This study certainly helps to understand what this area of the brain does."
Darby Proctor, a comparative psychologist at the Florida Institute of Technology who did not participate in the study, said it was "not surprising" to find that frontal cortex was involved in decisions.
"It's there that we know that humans make their complex decisions," said Proctor, who did similar work with primates. "But I think it's very interesting that they can change the answers by eliminating some of these areas." This really helps us refine the biological basis of these decisions. "
Proctor noted that there were only two monkeys in the study and that there were very few issues in the game trials, which could influence the decisions of the animals.
Stuphorn points out that this research provides new clues, but no definitive answers. SEF, for example, is related to ocular function and not to other motions of the engine. The results therefore have no direct impact on a casino game such as slot machines, which relies on arm movements controlled by another part of the brain.
But Daeyeol Lee, a neuroscientist at Yale University, said the importance of the study should not be underestimated because other areas of the brain close to the SEF control the function of the limbs.
"These areas all have similar properties," he said, which means that it is highly likely that more research would show greater applicability of Chen and Stuphorn's work.
Until then, Stuphorn seems convinced that the game's monkeys have provided research that is contributing to a broader shift in the way scientists perceive the perceptions of primates, and hence humans, of risk.
"People thought of risk-taking as a character trait of the person – that some people take risks and others do not," said Stuphorn. "Now people think that risk taking is more flexible."
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