Reconciling psychological and neuroscientific accounts of reduced motivation in aging.

ABSTRACT: Motivation is a hallmark of healthy aging, but the motivation to engage in effortful behavior diminishes with increasing age. Most neurobiological accounts of altered motivation in older adults assume that these deficits are caused by a gradual decline in brain tissue, while some psychological theories posit a switch from gain orientation to loss avoidance in motivational goals. Here, we contribute to reconcile the psychological and neural perspectives by providing evidence that the frontopolar cortex (FPC), a brain region involved in cost-benefit weighting, increasingly underpins effort avoidance rather than engagement with age. Using anodal transcranial direct current stimulation together with effort-reward trade-offs, we find that the FPC's function in effort-based decisions remains foc

SUBMITTER: Soutschek A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8972241 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature