First stable 'biomarker for financial risk-attitudes' identified

Melbourne: A new study has revealed about the first stable 'biomarker' for financial risk-attitudes suggesting that tolerance of risk could potentially be measured in billions of existing medical brain scans.

The study at the University of Sydney found that the grey matter volume was significantly predictive of individual risk attitudes, that is, people with higher grey matter volume of a region in the right posterior parietal cortex show less risk aversion.

Lead author Agnieszka Tymula said that individual risk attitudes are correlated with the grey matter volume in the posterior parietal cortex suggesting existence of an anatomical biomarker for financial risk-attitude.

The findings are published in The Journal of Neuroscience.