Separable brain systems supporting cued versus self-initiated realization of delayed intentions.

Abstract

In everyday life, one can link anticipated specific cues (e.g. visiting a restaurant) with desired actions (e.g., ordering a healthy meal). Alternatively, intentions such as "I intend to eat more healthily" present the option to act when one encounters the same cue. In the first case, a specific cue triggers a specific action; in the second, one must act in a more self-initiated manner. The authors compared such scenarios using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants were either instructed to respond in a particular manner to target events (cued condition) or told that they would score points for such responses, without being told that they were necessary (self-initiated condition). Although conditions differed only in the wording of instructions, the self-initiated condition was associated with poorer performance and greater activity in a predominantly frontoparietal network. Responses to targets in the self-initiated and cued conditions yielded greater activity in lateral and medial Brodmann area 10, respectively. The authors suggest that these results reflect differing demands for self-initiated versus externally cued behavior following different types of instruction, in line with the distinction between goal intentions and implementation intentions proposed by P. M. Gollwitzer and colleagues.

Decoding the Content of Delayed Intentions

“…In version 2 of the task, response confusions (i.e., pressing the wrong PM response button on a PM retrieval trial) were rare (4% of PM retrieval trials). PM accuracy in the present study was therefore comparable with previous studies of PM Gilbert et al, 2009) despite a mean delay between PM encoding and the opportunity to respond of just 10.8 s, much shorter than previous studies (typically on the order of several minutes or more). This suggests that the two-back task was sufficiently distracting to prevent continuous rehearsal of PM intentions (Einstein et al, 2003).…”

“…On the one hand, univariate analyses indicated strong engagement of RLPFC while participants stored PM intentions, consistent with previous neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies indicating the involvement of this region in PM (Okuda et al, 1998;Burgess et al, 2000Burgess et al, , 2001Burgess et al, , 2003Simons et al, 2006;West, 2008;Gilbert et al, 2009;Reynolds et al, 2009;Uretzky and Gilboa, 2010). However, it was not possible to decode the content of those intentions from patterns of activity within RLPFC (unlike widespread posterior brain regions).…”

“…The idea that RLPFC plays a "content-free" role in PM is congruent with repeated findings of RLPFC activation in PM paradigms using a wide variety of different stimulus types and task demands (Okuda et al, 1998;Burgess et al, 2001Burgess et al, , 2003Simons et al, 2006;Gilbert et al, 2009). Furthermore, the present The table shows peak coordinates of regions from which it was possible to decode the forthcoming PM cue (word vs picture) or the forthcoming PM response (third vs fourth finger) during PM storage periods with significantly greater accuracy than the corresponding baseline storage periods.…”

Fifty Years of Prefrontal Cortex Research: Impact on Assessment

“…Third, there is the interface between emotion and cognition, which is often the role of the prefrontal region. Small changes in the phrasing of the task instructions emphasizing either the action that needed to be carried out, or the reward that would be won, led to differential patterns of activation within rostral prefrontal cortex (Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, & Burgess, 2009; Figure 3). Fourth, differences in instructions are likely to call upon different processes to complete a task, seemingly independent of emotional/ cognition interplay (Floden, Vallesi, & Stuss, 2011;Stuss et al, 2000).…”

Planning and the Control of Action

“…For instance, Bayer, Achtziger, Gollwitzer, and Moskowitz ( 2009 ) found that implementation intentions encouraged successful pursuit of a goal even when the critical cue was presented subliminally, that is, when it was not consciously recognized. Moreover, studies of the human brain have found evidence that implementation intentions change action control from slow top-down to fast bottom-up processes (e.g., Gilbert, Gollwitzer, Cohen, Oettingen, & Burgess, 2009 ;Schweiger Gallo, Keil, McCulloch, Rockstroh, & Gollwitzer, 2009 ;Hallam et al, 2015 ). In summary, implementation intentions strategically automate the control of goal-directed actions, instantly and effi ciently activating the action response linked to a critical situation when the individual enters it.…”