Predicting Real-Life Self-Control From Brain Activity Encoding the Value of Anticipated Future Outcomes

Gespeichert in:

Personen und Körperschaften:	Krönke, Klaus-Martin, Wolff, Max, Mohr, Holger, Kräplin, Anja, Smolka, Michael N., Bühringer, Gerhard, Goschke, Thomas
Titel:	Predicting Real-Life Self-Control From Brain Activity Encoding the Value of Anticipated Future Outcomes
Format:	E-Artikel
Sprache:	Englisch
veröffentlicht:	London Sage 2020 Online-Ausg.. 2020
Schlagwörter:	Self-Control Decision-Making Experience Sampling Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Ecological Validity Selbstkontrolle Entscheidungsfindung Erfahrungssammlung Ventromedialer Präfrontaler Kortex Ökologische Validität
Quelle:	Qucosa

Details
Zusammenfassung:	Deficient self-control leads to shortsighted decisions and incurs severe personal and societal costs. Although neuroimaging has advanced our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying self-control, the ecological validity of laboratory tasks used to assess self-control remains largely unknown. To increase ecological validity and to test a specific hypothesis about the mechanisms underlying real-life self-control, we combined functional MRI during valuebased decision-making with smartphone-based assessment of real-life self-control in a large community sample (N = 194). Results showed that an increased propensity to make shortsighted decisions and commit self-control failures, both in the laboratory task as well as during real-life conflicts, was associated with a reduced modulation of neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to anticipated long-term consequences. These results constitute the first evidence that neural mechanisms mediating anticipations of future consequences not only account for self-control in laboratory tasks but also predict real-life self-control, thereby bridging the gap between laboratory research and real-life behavior.