Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.09.16.300525v1?rss=1 Authors: Aberg, K. C., Toren, I., Paz, R. Abstract: Exploration reduces uncertainty about the environment and improves the quality of future decisions, but at the cost of uncertain and suboptimal outcomes. Although anxiety increases intolerance to uncertainty, it remains unclear whether and how anxiety modulates exploratory decision-making. We use a three-armed-bandit task in both loss and gain domains and find that higher trait-anxiety increases exploration, which in turn underlies an inverse-U-shaped relationship between anxiety and overall performance. We identify two distinct sources: first, decisions made by anxious individuals were guided towards reduction of uncertainty, and second, decisions were less guided by immediate value gains. Imaging (fMRI) revealed that anxiety correlated negatively with the representation of expected-value in the dorsal-anterior-cingulate-cortex, and in contrast positively with the representation of uncertainty in the anterior-insula. We conclude that a shift in balance towards representation of uncertainty in the insula prevails over value representation in the dACC, and entails maladaptive decision-making in individuals with higher normal-range anxiety. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info