Dataset Information

Local and distributed cortical markers of effort expenditure during sustained goal pursuit.

ABSTRACT: The adaptive adjustment of behavior in pursuit of desired goals is critical for survival. To accomplish this complex feat, individuals must weigh the potential benefits of a given action against time, energy, and resource costs. Here, we examine brain responses associated with willingness to exert physical effort during the sustained pursuit of desired goals. Our analyses reveal a distributed pattern of brain activity in aspects of ventral medial prefrontal cortex that tracks with trial-level variability in effort expenditure. Indicating the brain represents echoes of effort at the point of feedback, whole-brain searchlights identified signals reflecting past effort expenditure in medial and lateral prefrontal cortices, encompassing broad swaths of frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks. These data have important implications for our understanding of how the brain's valuation mechanisms contend with the complexity of real-world dynamic environments with relevance for the study of behavior across health and disease.

SUBMITTER: Patrick LM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8961699 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Local and distributed cortical markers of effort expenditure during sustained goal pursuit.

Patrick Lauren M LM Anderson Kevin M KM Holmes Avram J AJ

NeuroImage 20210923

The adaptive adjustment of behavior in pursuit of desired goals is critical for survival. To accomplish this complex feat, individuals must weigh the potential benefits of a given action against time, energy, and resource costs. Here, we examine brain responses associated with willingness to exert physical effort during the sustained pursuit of desired goals. Our analyses reveal a distributed pattern of brain activity in aspects of ventral medial prefrontal cortex that tracks with trial-level va ...[more]

PMID: 34563679

Similar Datasets

Project description:Distracted eating can lead to increased food intake, but it is unclear how. We aimed to assess how distraction affects motivated, goal-directed responses for food reward after satiation. Thirty-eight healthy normal-weight participants (28F; 10M) performed a visual detection task varying in attentional load (high vs. low distraction) during fMRI. Simultaneously, they exerted effort for sweet and savory food rewards by repeated button presses. Two fMRI runs were separated by sensory-specific satiation (outcome devaluation) of one of the (sweet or savory) reward outcomes, to assess outcome-sensitive, goal-directed, responses (valued vs. devalued reward, post vs. pre satiation). We could not verify our primary hypothesis that more distraction leads to less activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during goal-directed effort. Behaviorally, distraction also did not affect effort for food reward following satiation across subjects. For our secondary hypothesis, we assessed whether distraction affected other fronto-striatal regions during goal-directed effort. We did not obtain such effects at our whole-brain corrected threshold, but at an exploratory uncorrected threshold (p < 0.001), distraction decreased goal-directed responses (devalued vs. valued) in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). We continued with this rIFG region for the next secondary hypothesis; specifically, that distraction would reduce functional connectivity with the fronto-striatal regions found in the previous analyses. Indeed, distraction decreased functional connectivity between the rIFG and left putamen for valued versus devalued food rewards (pFWE(cluster) < 0.05). In an exploratory brain-behavior analysis, we showed that distraction-sensitive rIFG-responses correlated negatively (r = - 0.40; p = 0.014) with the effect of distraction on effort. Specifically, decreased distraction-related rIFG-responses were associated with increased effort for food reward after satiation. We discuss the absence of distraction effects on goal-directed responses in vmPFC and in behavior across participants. Moreover, based on our significant functional connectivity and brain-behavior results, we suggest that distraction might attenuate the ability to inhibit responses for food reward after satiation by affecting the rIFG and its connection to the putamen.

Dataset Information

Local and distributed cortical markers of effort expenditure during sustained goal pursuit.

Publications

Local and distributed cortical markers of effort expenditure during sustained goal pursuit.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets