Excerpt from huffingtonpost.com
Lack of self-control is at the root of many personal and social ills,
from alcoholism to obesity. Even when we are well aware of the costs,
many of us are simply unable to curb our desires and control our
impulses. Indeed, so daunting is this psychological challenge that an
estimate four in every ten American deaths is attributed to self-control
failure of one kind or another.
Yet many other people do succeed
at self-regulation, all the time and seemingly with ease. Why is that?
Why, in the face of everyday temptation, do some individuals fail
miserably while others coast by unscathed?
Psychological
scientists have been puzzling over this problem for years, but the
answer remains elusive. Recently, researchers in the U.S. and Europe
have been taking a different approach. They have been trying to
integrate different disciplines, and different investigative strategies,
to see if this approach might illuminate the dynamics of desire and
self-control. Among those scientists is the University of Cologne’s
Wilhelm Hofmann, who with colleagues has been combining neuroimaging and
experience sampling, searching for brain markers that predict whether
people give in to their desires (or resist) in daily life. Hofmann
discussed some of this ongoing work this week in Amsterdam, at the first
International Convention of Psychological Science, a meeting organized
specifically to share such innovative cross-disciplinary research.
It’s
difficult to study individual desire and self-discipline, because many
self-reports are biased and unreliable. To get around this obstacle,
Hofmann and his colleagues used an fMRI scanner to observe subjects’
brains as they viewed appetizing foods–desserts, fast foods, and so
forth. Specifically, they recorded neural activity in the volunteers’
nucleus accumbens, or NAcc, a region of the forebrain associated with
pleasure and reward. They also recorded neural activity in the inferior
frontal gyrus, or IFG, while volunteers were performing a self-control
task. The IFG plays an important part in inhibiting action.
The
scientists wanted to see if neural activity in these two brain regions
predicted actual desire and self-regulation in these volunteers’ daily
lives. So after the brain scanning was completed, the scientists gave
the subjects Blackberries, which they used for a week of experience
sampling: Each day, the scientists signaled the subjects every two
hours, or seven times a day, and had them complete a short survey. They
reported on any desires they might have experienced in the previous half
hour, the strength of those desires, their resistance to the desire,
and finally, whether they had given into the desire and eaten–and if
so, how much.
The idea was to see if neural markers for desire and
resistance, taken together, could identify individuals who are more
likely to give in to temptation to eat, hour by hour. And they did,
clearly. Neural reactivity in the NAcc in response to tempting snacks
and sweets–this brain activity significantly predicted the strength of
subjects’ desire for food, their failure to control their desires, and
even how much they ate. Additionally, those who recruited the IFG when
faced with a self-control task–these subjects were less likely to
succumb to temptation in daily life–and they also ate less.
These
findings demonstrate the importance of individual differences in how
people experience and respond to everyday temptation. These
differences–how well or poorly individuals exert control in the face of
temptation–appear to arise from brain mechanisms for both reward
processing and regulation of responses. It’s not just that people with
self-control problems respond abnormally to food cues, and it’s not just
that they fail to inhibit their actions–it’s apparently both. These
abnormalities–and their neural signatures–may very well underlie other
appetites and addictions, including binge drinking, compulsive gambling
and risky sex.
WrayHerbert is reporting this week from the first International Convention of Psychological Science in Amsterdam.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/ylBPb0b1cLY/dont-blame-devil-anymore-is-temptation.html
Don't Blame the Devil Anymore: Is Temptation All in Your 'Syn' apse?
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