Iowa gambling task
The Iowa gambling task (IGT) is a psychological task thought to simulate real-life decision making. It was introduced by Antoine Bechara, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio and Steven Anderson, then researchers at the University of Iowa. It has been brought to popular attention by Antonio Damasio (proponent of the somatic marker hypothesis) in his best-selling book "Descartes' Error". The task was originally presented simply as the "Gambling Task", or the "OGT". Later, it has been referred to as the Iowa gambling task and, less frequently, as "Bechara's Gambling Task". The Iowa gambling task is widely  used in research of cognition and emotion. A recent review listed more than 400 papers that made use of this paradigm. Task structure. Participants are presented with four virtual decks of cards on a computer screen. They are told that each deck holds cards that will either reward or penalize them, using game money. The goal of the game is to win as much money as possible. The decks differ from each other in the balance of reward versus penalty cards. Thus, some decks are "bad decks", and other decks are "good decks", because some decks will tend to reward  the player more often than other decks. Common findings. Most healthy participants sample cards from each deck, and after about 40 or 50 selections are fairly effective at identifying and sticking to the good decks. Patients with orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) dysfunction, however, continue to persevere with the bad decks, sometimes even though they know that they are losing money overall. Concurrent measurement of galvanic skin response shows that healthy participants show a "stress" reaction to hovering over the bad decks after only 10 trials, long before conscious sensation that the decks are bad. By contrast, patients with amygdala lesions never  develop this physiological reaction to impending punishment. In another test, patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) dysfunction were shown to choose outcomes that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher losses in the future. Bechara and his colleagues explain these findings in terms of the somatic marker hypothesis. The Iowa gambling task is currently being used by a number of research groups using fMRI to investigate which brain regions are activated by the task in healthy volunteers as well as clinical groups with conditions such as schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Critiques. Although the IGT has achieved prominence, it  is not without its critics. Criticisms have been raised over both its design and its interpretation. Published critiques include: