Abstract
Biological explanations of behaviour are aimed at establishing the relationships between different bodily functions, mainly those pertaining to the central nervous system, and certain behaviours. For this purpose, researchers choose a well-known behaviour, e.g., a decision-making task, together with a wide array of techniques (lesion, electroencephalography, functional neuroimaging, biochemical tests, among others). The research techniques are usually aimed at intensifying, interrupting or influencing in some way the activity of the region under study. The characteristics of the performance of the chosen behaviour are observed, explored and recorded to assess the effects of the technique employed. Sometimes the region under study is not altered but changes in its activity that occur at the same time or immediately before/after the actual behaviour develops are recorded. By combining different techniques, researchers are able to elucidate the degree of the involvement of a given brain region in the selected behaviour. This chapter describes how in the field of decision-making different techniques and approaches indicate that a given region of the brain - the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - is necessary to achieve a good performance in the Iowa Gambling Task, a decision-making task characterized by uncertainty and risk.
