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A study has been published at Oxford Journals with the objective of determining the changes on the neural activities that are associated with risk taking decisions when aging.
Different areas of the brain when taking risk decisions are activated between young adults and older adults and also older adults display a significantly higher rate of selecting safe responses when compared with younger adults. Obviously younger adults make more risky responses than safe responses.
According to studies both older adults and young adults take more time to make safe responses than a risky ones.
Besides using different parts of the brain when making risk decisions older adults also show stronger neural activities than young adults.
To reach these results researchers monitored the subjects with an fMRI scanner.
The results of the study revealed that younger and older adults relied on different brain mechanisms when taking risk decisions what reflects on older adults selecting fewer risky responses.
In conclusion the results of this study suggest that possible neuropsychological reasons and mechanisms underlie the change in impulsive and risky behaviors during the course of natural ageing.
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