Decision Making Under Uncertainty in Neurological Conditions
Description
This presentation will discuss how people reduce uncertainty by acquiring information prior to making a decision, and how this is altered in neurological conditions.
Decision-Making Impairments in Patients with Neurological Disease: Underlying Brain Mechanisms and Treatment Considerations*
Date: September 15, 2025
Time: 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Track: Interactive Lunch Workshop
Session Description
Impairments in decision making directly affect medical care and financial decisions, and they characterize many neurological and psychiatric disorders, often with a direct influence on disease course. Novel approaches for understanding these impairments, including behavioral and neuroeconomic tools, computational modeling, neuroimaging analytics, and pharmacological (and other) interventions, are providing insights into their neural correlates as well as their potential remediation. This session will illustrate how a deeper understanding of the neural basis of decision making in patient populations can move neurology toward new treatments.
To lead off the workshop, Dr. Husain will discuss decision making under uncertainty in patients with neurological conditions, building upon his pioneering work in patient groups with subjective cognitive impairment and brain lesions in the medial temporal lobe. Dr. Kayser will then discuss how evaluating more naturalistic, open-ended choices might expand our understanding of decision-making deficits. Lastly, Dr. Chiong will critically evaluate the ethical, health policy, and health equity implications of this work.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this session, attendees should be able to:
- Discuss the variety of cognitive deficits that can contribute to decision making impairments.
- Discuss the ways in which novel approaches might improve our ability to identify these decision making impairments sooner.
- Understand how ethical considerations inform our approach to decision making impairments.
Speakers
- (Speaker) Masud Husain, FMedSci, FRCP, PhD, FANA
- (Speaker) Andrew Kayser, MD, PhD, FANA
- (Speaker) Winston Chiong, MD, PhD
Mechanisms Underlying Open-ended Decisions, and Their Disruption in Neurodegenerative Disease
Description
This presentation will discuss open-ended decision making (ODM) is poorly understood in both health & disease and mechanisms of ODM and their disruption in dementia.
Speakers
Frameworks for Decision-making when Decision-making is the Problem
Description
This presentation will review an examination of ethical and legal problems in care planning and financial decision making for patients with decisional impairments.