Attenuated brain activity during error processing and punishment anticipation in procrastination – a monetary Go/No-go fMRI study

Abstract

Procrastination is a self-regulatory failure in which people voluntarily but irrationally delay important tasks. Trait procrastination is estimated to affect 15–20% of the total population and leads to a significant decrease in performance, satisfaction with achievements, and quality of life. Procrastination is related to impulsivity and reduced executive control, especially in the domain of inhibition. Moreover, procrastinatory tendencies seem to increase with negative affect, suggesting impaired emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate the neuronal mechanisms of inhibition, error processing, and behavioral control under pressure of punishment in procrastinators. Non-student subjects recruited to low (LP) and high procrastination (HP) groups performed an fMRI monetary Go/No-go task. HP showed significantly lower error-related activity in ACC than LP. There was also a significant group by condition interaction in the ACC and right DLPFC suggesting increase of control during the punishment condition in LP but not HP group. These results suggest that procrastinators have impaired error processing mechanisms which may add to the persistence of procrastination through difficulties in correction of faulty behaviors. Procrastination also seems to be related to a decreased ability to intensify self-control in more demanding situations and/or impaired coping in the context of negative situations.

Brain potentials reveal reduced attention and error-processing during a monetary Go/No-Go task in procrastination

“…Our own findings from two monetary Go/No-Go studies confirmed that procrastinators are characterized by increased impulsivity and executive dysfunctions 24,25 . In these studies, participants completed the Go/No-Go task in the standard version where subjects' gratification did not rely on task performance.…”

“…This deficit was, however, only observed in punishment condition but not in reward and standard conditions suggesting that procrastinators' executive deficits are particularly strong when punishment is expected. The second study 25 confirmed the impairment in executive control in procrastinators in the punishment condition. In this functional brain imaging (fMRI) study, we found reduced activations in procrastinators during the whole punishment condition in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), regions that are related to self-control 29 .…”

“…The present study aimed to continue this line of research and to replicate the findings of error-processing deficits in procrastination 24,25 by using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs, compared to other neuroscientific measures (such as BOLD in fMRI) are highly suitable to track specific cognitive processes due to their high temporal resolution.…”

Impaired learning from errors and punishments and maladaptive avoidance – general mechanisms underlying self-regulation disorders?

“…Indeed, abstinent cocaine-dependent participants showed hypoactivity of the ACC and right DLPFC in relation to punished errors in the Go/No-go task (Hester et al, 2013). We have found similar results (diminished ACC and right DLPFC activity during punishment condition in the Go/No-go task) in individuals high in procrastination (Wypych et al, 2019). These findings are in line with prior theories (Heatherton & Wagner, 2011) and suggest that impairment of prefrontal control by punishment threat or negative emotions may operate for many subject groups characterized by low SR (note however that previously mentioned study (Duehlmeyer & Hester, 2019) showed higher DLPFC activity in tobacco-smoking individuals during re-encoding of later-corrected errors, possibly reflecting higher difficulty and/or effort needed to correctly perform in the task).…”

“…Interestingly, however, in people with alcohol dependence, increased ERN was found, possibly in relation to higher anxiety (Schellekens et al, 2010). Diminished error-related brain activity has also been found in people with criminal recidivism (Aharoni et al, 2013), procrastination (Wypych et al, 2019;Michałowski et al, submitted), and high impulsivity (Ruchsow et al, 2005). These results suggest impaired error processing may link transdiagnostically to multiple groups with low SR.…”