Brain structure could predict risky behavior.

• Position: Decisionmaking

Some people avoid risks at all costs, while others will put their wealth, health, and safety at risk without a thought. A team of scientists, including researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science and Yale School of Medicine, has found that the volume of a part of the brain in the parietal cortex can predict where people fall on the risk-taking spectrum.

In their study, NYU's Paul Glimcher and Yale's Ifat Levy found that those with larger volume in a particular part of the parietal cortex were willing to take more risks than those with less volume in this part of the brain.

'This is the first demonstration of a biomarker of human risk attitude, which opens the doors for using brain scans to predict people's responses to risk," explains Glimcher, professor in the Center for Neural Science. Although several cognitive and personality traits are reflected in brain structure, there has been little research linking brain structure to economic preferences.

"Based on our findings, we could, in principle, use millions of existing medical brain scans to assess risk attitudes in populations," relates Levy, a former NYU...