Dataset Information

Saving for the future self: neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting.

ABSTRACT: Despite increases in the human life span, people have not increased their rate of saving. In a phenomenon known as 'temporal discounting', people value immediate gains over future gains. According to a future self-continuity hypothesis, individuals perceive and treat the future self differently from the present self, and so might fail to save for their future. Neuroimaging offers a novel means of testing this hypothesis, since previous research indicates that self- vs other-judgments elicit activation in the rostral anterior cingulate (rACC). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we predicted and found not only individual differences in rACC activation while rating the current vs future self, but also that individual differences in current vs future self activation predicted temporal discounting assessed behaviorally a week after scanning. In addition to supporting the future self-continuity hypothesis, these findings hold implications for significant financial decisions, such as choosing whether to save for the future or spend in the present.

SUBMITTER: Ersner-Hershfield H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2656877 | biostudies-other | 2009 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Saving for the future self: neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting.

Ersner-Hershfield Hal H Wimmer G Elliott GE Knutson Brian B

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20081130 1

Despite increases in the human life span, people have not increased their rate of saving. In a phenomenon known as 'temporal discounting', people value immediate gains over future gains. According to a future self-continuity hypothesis, individuals perceive and treat the future self differently from the present self, and so might fail to save for their future. Neuroimaging offers a novel means of testing this hypothesis, since previous research indicates that self- vs other-judgments elicit acti ...[more]

PMID: 19047075

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Project description:In recent years the emergence of high-performance virtual reality (VR) technology has opened up new possibilities for the examination of context effects in psychological studies. The opportunity to create ecologically valid stimulation in a highly controlled lab environment is especially relevant for studies of psychiatric disorders, where it can be problematic to confront participants with certain stimuli in real life. However, before VR can be confidently applied widely it is important to establish that commonly used behavioral tasks generate reliable data within a VR surrounding. One field of research that could benefit greatly from VR-applications are studies assessing the reactivity to addiction related cues (cue-reactivity) in participants suffering from gambling disorder. Here we tested the reliability of a commonly used temporal discounting task in a novel VR set-up designed for the concurrent assessment of behavioral and psychophysiological cue-reactivity in gambling disorder. On 2 days, thirty-four healthy non-gambling participants explored two rich and navigable VR-environments (neutral: café vs. gambling-related: casino and sports-betting facility), while their electrodermal activity was measured using remote sensors. In addition, participants completed the temporal discounting task implemented in each VR environment. On a third day, participants performed the task in a standard lab testing context. We then used comprehensive computational modeling using both standard softmax and drift diffusion model (DDM) choice rules to assess the reliability of discounting model parameters assessed in VR. Test-retest reliability estimates were good to excellent for the discount rate log(k), whereas they were poor to moderate for additional DDM parameters. Differences in model parameters between standard lab testing and VR, reflecting reactivity to the different environments, were mostly numerically small and of inconclusive directionality. Finally, while exposure to VR generally increased tonic skin conductance, this effect was not modulated by the neutral versus gambling-related VR-environment. Taken together this proof-of-concept study in non-gambling participants demonstrates that temporal discounting measures obtained in VR are reliable, suggesting that VR is a promising tool for applications in computational psychiatry, including studies on cue-reactivity in addiction.

Project description:The capacity to envision the future plays an important role in many aspects of cognition, including our ability to make optimal, adaptive choices. Past work has shown that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is necessary for decisions that draw on episodic future thinking. By contrast, little is known about the role of the MTL in decisions that draw on semantic future thinking. Accordingly, the present study investigated whether the MTL contributes to one form of decision making, namely intertemporal choice, when such decisions depend on semantic consideration of the future. In an intertemporal choice task, participants must select either a smaller amount of money that is available in the present or a larger amount of money that would be available at a future date. Amnesic individuals with MTL damage and healthy control participants performed such a task in which, prior to making a choice, they engaged in a semantic generation exercise, wherein they generated items that they would purchase with the future reward. In experiment 1, we found that, relative to a baseline condition involving standard intertemporal choice, healthy individuals were more inclined to select a larger, later reward over a smaller, present reward after engaging in semantic future thinking. By contrast, amnesic participants were paradoxically less inclined to wait for a future reward following semantic future thinking. This finding suggests that amnesics may have had difficulty "tagging" the generated item(s) as belonging to the future. Critically, experiment 2 showed that when the generated items were presented alongside the intertemporal choices, both controls and amnesic participants shifted to more patient choices. These findings suggest that the MTL is not needed for making optimal decisions that draw on semantic future thinking as long as scaffolding is provided to support accurate time tagging. Together, these findings stand to better clarify the role of the MTL in decision making.

Dataset Information

Saving for the future self: neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting.

Publications

Saving for the future self: neural measures of future self-continuity predict temporal discounting.

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