Cortical microstructural integrity predicts an exploitation bias in older adulthood

Prefrontal regions are implicated in explore-exploit decision-making during foraging. Older adults often show an exploitation bias, and this age period is also marked by deteriorating prefrontal myelination. To investigate whether these phenomena are linked, we examined whether lower magnetization transfer saturation (MTsat), a myelin-sensitive quantitative MRI (qMRI) measure, in these regions predicts greater exploitation bias during foraging, and whether cortical microstructure is a better predictor of bias than macrostructure (i.e., cortical thickness).

Cognitively healthy older adults with familial risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) (N = 118, 60-88 years) completed a foraging task indexing explore-exploit decision-making. qMRI was used to derive MTsat values for the frontopolar cortex (FPC), medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), rostral middle frontal gyrus (rMFG), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), as well as the locus coeruleus (LC), a core subcortical region strongly implicated in explore-exploit decision-making. Secondary analyses examined associations between available AD risk markers and foraging.

Lower MTsat in the FPC, OFC, rMFG, and LC was associated with an exploitation bias, with LC and FPC emerging as the strongest predictors. No relationship was observed for the dACC. MTsat remained a significant predictor of foraging after controlling for cortical thickness. Observed associations were largely unrelated to AD risk markers.

Individual differences in cortical microstructural integrity within a well-defined explore-exploit circuit are associated with an exploitative decision-making bias in older adults. These findings highlight the value of qMRI microstructural integrity markers, beyond standard macrostructural assays, in characterizing the neural correlates of exploitation biases in later life.