Article #10: The Part of the Brain Responsible for Self-Control

When choosing what foods to snack on, most of us do not use our brains to make that decision for us, we take what is more tempting. Whether or not we want to go on a diet determines on a small region of the forebrain that is involved in self-control. Studying this region of the brain will provide help to individuals with self-destructing behaviors such as alcoholism, overeating, and smoking.

Behavioral researchers have long known that self-control is an important component of decision-making (Pappas 2009). But many were unsure where the region of the brain controlled these behaviors. Thirty seven volunteers who were dieters were put to the test to determine which part of the brain controlled temptations to certain types of foods. They fasted for 3 hours and were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI), which measures brain activity. While in the machine, they had to rate 50 images of food on a scale of 1-5 on how healthy and tasty they were. The researchers picked out the foods that volunteers rated neutral for both healthy and tasty and made them choose between the foods. Half of the volunteers chose the heathier foods and the other half chose the more tasty foods.

The part of the brain that lit up on the fMRI when volunteers chose healthier foods is called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, previously responsible for learning and memory. This region when activated, gives the person the ability to make responsible, self-controlling decisions, therefore half of the dieters were using this part of the brain make that healthy decision for them. With the discovery of this region of the brain, scientists are able to come up with treatments that can provide individuals who have difficulty controlling their bad urges.

Citation Information
Pappas, Stephanie. 2009 “The Science of Self-Control” ScienceNOW Daily News [Internet] Washington DC and Cambridge, UK: High Wire Press; 2009 [cited 2009 May 25]. Available from http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/501/3