RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Brain Activity in Valuation Regions while Thinking about the Future Predicts Individual Discount Rates
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 13150
OP 13156
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0400-13.2013
VO 33
IS 32
A1 Cooper, Nicole
A1 Kable, Joseph W.
A1 Kim, B. Kyu
A1 Zauberman, Gal
YR 2013
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/32/13150.abstract
AB People vary widely in how much they discount delayed rewards, yet little is known about the sources of these differences. Here we demonstrate that neural activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum (VS) when human subjects are asked to merely think about the future—specifically, to judge the subjective length of future time intervals—predicts delay discounting. High discounters showed lower activity for longer time delays, while low discounters showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the correlation between VMPFC and VS activity and discounting occurs even in the absence of choices about future rewards, and does not depend on a person explicitly evaluating future outcomes or judging their self-relevance. This suggests a link between discounting and basic processes involved in thinking about the future, such as temporal perception. Our results also suggest that reducing impatience requires not suppression of VMPFC and VS activity altogether, but rather modulation of how these regions respond to the present versus the future.