Abstract

Engaging in effortful self-control can sometimes impair people’s ability to resist subsequent temptations. Existing research has shown that when chronic dieters’ self-regulatory capacity is challenged by prior exertion of effort, they demonstrate disinhibited eating and altered patterns of brain activity when exposed to food cues. However, the relationship between brain activity during self-control exertion and subsequent food cue exposure remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated whether individual differences in recruitment of cognitive control regions during a difficult response inhibition task are associated with a failure to regulate neural responses to rewarding food cues in a subsequent task in a cohort of 27 female dieters. During self-control exertion, participants recruited regions commonly associated with inhibitory control, including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Those dieters with higher DLPFC activity during the initial self-control task showed an altered balance of food cue elicited activity in regions associated with reward and self-control, namely: greater reward-related activity and less recruitment of the frontoparietal control network. These findings suggest that some dieters may be more susceptible to the effects of self-control exertion than others and, whether due to limited capacity or changes in motivation, these dieters subsequently fail to engage control regions that may otherwise modulate activity associated with craving and reward.

Highlights

  • Defined, self-regulation refers to the human capacity to flexibly regulate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors

  • In a recent brain imaging study, dieters randomly assigned to first complete an effortful self-control task showed, on average, significantly higher activity in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key region in the brain’s reward system; (O’Doherty, 2004; Suzuki, Cross & O’Doherty, 2017; Haber & Knutson, 2010) during subsequent exposure to food cues, as well as reduced functional coupling between inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), an area of lateral prefrontal cortex, and the OFC—relative to dieters assigned to the control condition (Wagner et al, 2013). These findings indicated that when dieters engage in effortful self-control, the reward value of food may become amplified while self-control capacity—as indexed by reduced functional connectivity between OFC and IFG—may be compromised

  • To relate brain activity during effortful self-control to subsequent food cue reactivity, we first calculated the correlation between brain activity in this region and the relative balance of activity in frontoparietal regions during exposure to food commercials

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Summary

Introduction

Self-regulation refers to the human capacity to flexibly regulate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Recruitment of cognitive control regions during effortful self-control is associated with altered brain activity in control and reward systems in dieters during subsequent exposure to food commercials. In situations when impulses and cravings are relatively weak, less effort is required to engage in self-control. A large body of research in experimental psychology has examined how the effects of exerting self-control in one domain can lead to selfregulation failure in other domains, resulting in the hypothesis that self-regulation is dependent on limited cognitive resources that can become depleted over subsequent self-regulation attempts (Baumeister et al, 1998; Baumeister, Vohs & Tice, 2007; Muraven, Tice & Baumeister, 1998; Vohs & Heatherton, 2000)

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