When I was a teenager, I had a paper route. Given that most of my customers (i.e. my neighbors) were born before or during the Great Depression let’s just say I didn’t have a very lucrative business. Many of my customers not only gave me 25 cents, half-dollars, or Susan B. Anthony dollars as tips (and would sometimes run upstairs to retrieve the coins from a tin can) but many distrusted banks. This one woman in her late seventies actually admitted that she did not have a bank account, had never written a check in her lifetime, and stored all her money, including life savings in her bedroom! Wow. If one additionally considers where I was raised and worked as a papergirl in the early millennium, Youngstown, OH, which at the time was ranked as the most dangerous city in America determined from the number of homicides per population (1 for every 800 Youngstownians), this woman’s decision to stow her life savings under her mattress is even more preposterous!
Perplexed by this odd, illogical behavior for years, a scientifically plausible justification for this behavior has been revealed in this week’s Journal of Neuroscience. Stanfordian scientists have discovered that financial risks increase with age. Neurobiologically, these risks manifest from differential activity within the nucleus accumbens which is characteristically known as the pleasure/reward center of the brain (food, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, money, fame, and even tickle fetishes!). In all seriousness, this research is yet another suggestion that age-related decline in brain functioning, including depressions in synaptic plasticity, connectivity, and neuronal firing) has deleterious effects on cognitive functioning, particularly that involved with risks, decision making, and memory. South Park addressed this issue years ago, by publicizing (in most cases over-dramatizing) the erratic driving behavior of seniors.
It also begs the question of whether the bigwigs of Wall Street are simply suffering from premature age-related dementia and/or have differential accumbal activity comparable to their elders.
Samanez-Larkin, G., Kuhnen, C., Yoo, D., & Knutson, B. (2010). Variability in Nucleus Accumbens Activity Mediates Age-Related Suboptimal Financial Risk Taking Journal of Neuroscience, 30 (4), 1426-1434 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4902-09.2010
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