TY - JOUR
T1 - Restricting temptations
T2 - Neural mechanisms of precommitment
AU - Crockett, Molly J.
AU - Braams, Barbara R.
AU - Clark, Luke
AU - Tobler, Philippe N.
AU - Robbins, Trevor W.
AU - Kalenscher, Tobias
N1 - Funding Information:
M.J.C. is supported by the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship. T.K. was supported by a VENI grant from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO; grant 016.081.144). Scanning costs were in part funded by the Amsterdam graduate school for the neurosciences (ONWA). P.N.T. was supported by a University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society (UF080591) and by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grants PP00P1_128574 and CRSII3_141965). Study 1 was completed at the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, which is supported by a joint award from the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust (G00001354). We thank Anna Barnes for assistance with image preprocessing, Todd Hare for comments on the manuscript and assistance with the PPI analysis, Zeb Kurth-Nelson for comments on the manuscript, and our three anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback and suggestions.
PY - 2013/7/24
Y1 - 2013/7/24
N2 - Humans can resist temptations by exerting willpower, the effortful inhibition of impulses. But willpower can be disrupted by emotions and depleted over time. Luckily, humans can deploy alternative self-control strategies like precommitment, the voluntary restriction of access to temptations. Here, we examined the neural mechanisms of willpower and precommitment using fMRI. Behaviorally, precommitment facilitated choices for large delayed rewards, relative to willpower, especially in more impulsive individuals. While willpower was associated with activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and inferior frontal gyrus, precommitment engaged lateral frontopolar cortex (LFPC). During precommitment, LFPC showed increased functional connectivity with DLPFC and PPC, especially in more impulsive individuals, and the relationship between impulsivity and LFPC connectivity was mediated by value-related activation in ventromedial PFC. Our findings support a hierarchical model of self-control in which LFPC orchestrates precommitment by controlling action plans in more caudal prefrontal regions as a function of expected value
AB - Humans can resist temptations by exerting willpower, the effortful inhibition of impulses. But willpower can be disrupted by emotions and depleted over time. Luckily, humans can deploy alternative self-control strategies like precommitment, the voluntary restriction of access to temptations. Here, we examined the neural mechanisms of willpower and precommitment using fMRI. Behaviorally, precommitment facilitated choices for large delayed rewards, relative to willpower, especially in more impulsive individuals. While willpower was associated with activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and inferior frontal gyrus, precommitment engaged lateral frontopolar cortex (LFPC). During precommitment, LFPC showed increased functional connectivity with DLPFC and PPC, especially in more impulsive individuals, and the relationship between impulsivity and LFPC connectivity was mediated by value-related activation in ventromedial PFC. Our findings support a hierarchical model of self-control in which LFPC orchestrates precommitment by controlling action plans in more caudal prefrontal regions as a function of expected value
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.05.028
DO - 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.05.028
M3 - Article
C2 - 23889938
AN - SCOPUS:84880649827
SN - 0896-6273
VL - 79
SP - 391
EP - 401
JO - Neuron
JF - Neuron
IS - 2
ER -