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Decision-making deficits of korsakoff patients in a new gambling task with explicit rules: associations with executive functions.

Brand M, Fujiwara E, Borsutzky S, Kalbe E, Kessler J, Markowitsch HJ

Department of Physiological Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany. m.brand@unibielefeld.de

Decision-making deficits reflected by risky decisions in gambling tasks have been associated with frontal lobe dysfunctions in various neurologic and psychiatric populations. The question remains whether decision-making impairments are related to executive functions. The authors developed a new gambling task, the Game of Dice Task, with explicit and stable rules for reinforcement and punishment, to investigate relations between executive functions and risk-taking behavior in an explicit decision-making situation. A sample of 35 alcoholic Korsakoff patients and 35 healthy controls was examined with the Game of Dice Task and a neuropsychological test battery. Results show that Korsakoff patients are strongly impaired in this explicit decision-making task and that these disturbances are correlated with specific executive functions.

Published 24 May 2005 in Neuropsychology, 19(3): 267-77.
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