The Hippocampus Contributes to Temporal Discounting When Delays and Rewards Are Experienced in the Moment.

ABSTRACT: Temporal discounting (TD) represents the mental devaluation of rewards that are available after a delay. Whether the hippocampus is critical for TD remains unclear, with marked discrepancies between animal and human studies: although animals with discrete hippocampal lesions display impaired TD, human participants with similar lesions show intact performance on classic intertemporal choice tasks. A candidate explanation for this discrepancy is that delays and rewards are experienced in the moment in animal studies but tend to be hypothetical in human studies. We tested this hypothesis by examining the performance of amnesic participants with hippocampal lesions (one female, six males) on a novel experiential intertemporal choice task that used interesting photographs occluded by thick line

SUBMITTER: Patt VM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10401634 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature