REVIEW article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Pathological Conditions
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1637582
Neural Mechanisms of Maladaptive Risk Decision-Making Across Psychiatric Disorders
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jining Medical University, Jining, China
- 2Shandong Province Ankang Hospital, Jining, China
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Risk decision-making is a fundamental cognitive process that involves distributed neural circuits, with impairments observed across various psychiatric conditions. This systematic review synthesizes current evidence on the neurobiological substrates underlying maladaptive risk processing, highlighting three key findings. First, frontostriatal dysregulation is identified as a central feature, characterized by prefrontal hypoactivation and striatal hyperreactivity, particularly prominent in bipolar disorder and addiction. Second, disorder-specific neural signatures are noted, such as insular dysfunction in anxiety disorders, ventral striatal blunting in depression, and orbitofrontal-insula decoupling in schizophrenia. Third, computational modeling reveals distinct alterations in risk sensitivity, loss aversion, and reward valuation parameters across different diagnostic categories. This review also evaluates principal assessment methodologies and therapeutic interventions. Future research should prioritize the integration of computational psychiatry with multimodal biomarkers to advance both theoretical models and clinical applications.
Keywords: Risk decision-making, frontostriatal circuits, Computational Psychiatry, Transdiagnostic, Neuromodulation
Received: 29 May 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ji, Xia, Wang, Lin, Zhang, Wang, Wang, Du and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shanling Ji, Jining Medical University, Jining, China
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