Citation

Wagner DD, Altman M, Boswell RG, Kelley WM, Heatherton TF. Psychol. Sci. 2013; 24(11): 2262-2271.

Affiliation

Dartmouth College.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797613492985

PMID

24026225

Abstract

To be successful at self-regulation, individuals must be able to resist impulses and desires. The strength model of self-regulation suggests that when self-regulatory capacity is depleted, self-control deficits result from a failure to engage top-down control mechanisms. Using functional neuroimaging, we examined changes in brain activity in response to viewing desirable foods among 31 chronic dieters, half of whom completed a task known to result in self-regulatory depletion. Compared with nondepleted dieters, depleted dieters exhibited greater food-cue-related activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain area associated with coding the reward value and liking aspects of desirable foods; they also showed decreased functional connectivity between this area and the inferior frontal gyrus, a region commonly implicated in self-control. These findings suggest that self-regulatory depletion provokes self-control failure by reducing connectivity between brain regions that are involved in cognitive control and those that represent rewards, thereby decreasing the capacity to resist temptations.

Language: en