The Influence of Stress on the Intrinsic Cost of Self-Control

项目摘要 在日常生活中使用自我控制对于健康，适应性功能至关重要，但通常会受到以下因素的影响： 应力对压力的神经生理反应被认为会改变大脑中的决策回路， 导致情绪和行为控制受损，以及可能产生有害影响的次优决策 对心理和身体健康都有影响。暴露在压力下被广泛认为是一个主要的 一系列精神障碍的发展、维持和复发的预测因素，包括 焦虑，抑郁，以及那些以病理性选择为标志的，如肥胖，赌博， 物质使用。然而，关于压力如何影响自我控制在价值观中的作用的机械解释- 缺乏决策依据。最近的研究表明，由于自我控制的运用， 认知资源，它对个人施加成本，可能导致他们偏离目标导向 控制行为的策略，而不是依赖于计算成本较低但可能导致 次优结果。目前的建议旨在促进我们对压力如何影响 通过测量个人分配给自我控制使用的成本来决定使用自我控制策略。我们将 使用行为测量来描述压力对使用自我控制的决定的具体影响， 应激反应的神经内分泌测量，神经经济学，功能性神经成像和计算 建模具体来说，我们将研究个人如何构建自我控制的成本后，预先暴露于 使用经过验证的神经经济学方法（目标1）。此外，我们将描述神经 使用基于模型的功能磁共振成像（Aim 2）在压力下如何做出自我控制决策的潜在机制。我们 预测（1）自我控制在压力下比在非压力条件下更昂贵，（2） 编码值的大脑区域之间的相互作用（即，纹状体、腹内侧前额叶皮质（PFC））和 支持认知控制不同方面的区域（即背外侧PFC，前扣带皮层）将 以可分离的方式记录自我控制成本，（3）压力会选择性地改变大脑活动模式 与计算这些地区的自我控制成本有关。从该提案中获得的知识将 推进我们对指导自我控制决策的神经计算机制的理解，以及如何 这些机制在压力下发生改变。这些目标将有助于实现本建议的培训目标， 提供行为经济学理论、高级功能成像和计算建模方面的培训。的 拟议中的研究将直接影响与压力有关的焦虑和情绪障碍， 以病态选择为特征的疾病，如肥胖、赌博、酗酒和吸毒。

Project Summary The use of self-control in everyday life is critical to healthy, adaptive functioning but is often compromised by stress. Neurophysiological responses to stress are thought to alter decision-making circuits in the brain, leading to impaired emotional and behavioral control, and suboptimal decisions that can have deleterious consequences to both psychological and physical health. Exposure to stress is widely considered to be a major predictive factor to the development, maintenance and relapse of a range of mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, and those marked by pathological choice, such as such as obesity, gambling, and substance use. However, a mechanistic account of how stress influences the use of self-control during value- based decision-making is lacking. Recent research has proposed that since the exertion of self-control utilizes cognitive resources, it imposes costs on an individual that may lead them to deviate from goal-directed strategies to control behavior, relying instead on strategies that are less computationally costly but may lead to suboptimal outcomes. The current proposal aims to advance our understanding of how stress might influence decisions to use self-control strategies by measuring the costs individuals assign to self-control use. We will characterize the specific effects of stress on decisions to use self-control using behavioral measures, neuroendocrine measures of stress response, neuroeconomics, functional neuroimaging and computational modeling. Specifically, we will examine how individuals construct the cost of self-control after pre-exposure to stress using a validated neuroeconomic approach (Aim 1). Further, we will characterize the neural mechanisms underlying how self-control decisions are made under stress using model-based fMRI (Aim2). We predict that (1) self-control will be perceived as more costly under stress than under non-stress conditions, (2) the interaction between value-encoding brain regions (i.e., striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC)) and regions that support different aspects of cognitive control (i.e, dorsolateral PFC, anterior cingulate cortex) will register self-control costs in dissociable ways, and (3) that stress will selectively alter patterns of brain activity related to computing self-control costs in these regions. The knowledge obtained from this proposal will advance our understanding of the neurocomputational mechanisms that guide self-control decisions and how these mechanisms are altered under stress. These aims will facilitate the training goals of this proposal by offering training in behavioral economic theory, advanced functional imaging, and computational modeling. The proposed research will have direct implications both for stress-related anxiety and mood disorders and those that are marked by pathological choice, such as obesity, gambling alcoholism and drug addiction.