How interoceptive sensibility moderates decision-making: an fMRI study of neuroforecasting mobile games engagement

Neuroscientists in decision science have advanced an affect-integration-motivation (AIM) framework, demonstrating that neural activity associated with positive affect or value integration can predict individual and aggregate choice. Given that individuals with higher interoceptive sensibility (IS) have tendency to engage their bodily sensations and thus exhibit a more coherent pattern between their neural, affective, and behavioral measures, we investigated how IS may interact with the affective/integrative components for predicting individual and aggregate choice. Thus, we 1) explored neural underpinnings of individual choice, affective ratings, aggregate outcomes, 2) examined how the above-mentioned measures predict individual and aggregate choices on mobile games, and 3) tested the moderation effect of IS by comparing the differences in how these measures perform in prediction models between subgroups of IS. Neuroimaging results showed that individual choice associated with NAcc activity, aggregate download rate tracked by regions in salience network, and revenue additionally tracked by regions in motor tendency and attention regulation. Affective ratings and AIns activity predicted individual download choice; mPFC activity forecasted aggregate download rate, and positive arousal forecasted aggregate revenue. As hypothesized, the high IS group displayed coherent correlations between affective ratings, individual choice, and neural measures. More importantly, at the aggregate level, mPFC activity (integrative component), forecasted aggregate download rate above and beyond ratings and individual choice in the high IS group, with this prediction significantly stronger compared with the low IS group. These findings extend the AIM framework by shedding light on the influence of interoceptive sensibility on the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying human decision-making.