Bechara et al. conducted their gambling task with a population of healthy adults and a population of individuals with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM). They found that the VM patients, unlike the healthy adults, did not gradually shift their choices to the more advantageous deck B. Other studies employing Bechara’s design have found that individuals with damaged orbitofrontal cortex have an impaired ability at adapting their deck preferences to deck B in comparison to control subjects (Damasio, 1994). Denburg et al. (1999) administered this task with a population of healthy older adults and argued that the older individuals behave similarly to the frontal-lobe-damaged subjects. Our.
