Correlates of Attention in the Cingulate Cortex During Gambling in Humans.

People make decisions multiple times on a daily basis. However, some decisions are easier to make than others and perhaps require more attention to ensure a positive outcome. During gambling, one should attempt to compute the expected rewards and risks associated with decisions. Failing to allocate attention and neural resources to estimate these values can be costly, and in some cases can lead to bankruptcy. Alpha-band (8-12 Hz) oscillatory power in the brain is thought to reflect attention, but how this influences financial decision making is not well understood. Using local field potential recordings in nine human subjects performing a gambling task, we compared alpha-band power from the cingulate cortex (CC) during trials of low and high attention. We found that alpha-band power tended to be higher during a 2 second window after a fixation cue was shown in low attention trials.