The specialized neurosurgical expertise of University of Iowa physician-scientists and the generous contributions of UI Health Care neurosurgery patients who volunteer to participate in research were instrumental to new findings that reveal the sequence of brain activity involved when people evaluate risk and reward during decision-making. The study, conducted by researchers at Caltech in collaboration with the UI neurosurgery Human Brain Research Laboratory team members, reveals how neural activity within the brain enables humans to first estimate reward probabilities and then use this information to make a risk versus reward calculation when making an economic decision.