A neural signature of the vividness of prospective thought is modulated by temporal proximity during intertemporal decision making
Sangil Lee,T. Parthasarathi,3 作者,J. Kable
TLDR
A neural signature of the vividness of prospective thought is constructed, using an fMRI dataset where the vividity of imagined future events is orthogonal to their valence by design, and applied to two additional fMRI datasets to show that neural measures of vividness decline as rewards are delayed farther into the future.
摘要
Significance People tend to devalue, or discount, outcomes in the future relative to those that are more immediate; future discounting can explain people’s difficulty in choosing healthier food or saving money for retirement. Several psychological theories propose that one reason delayed outcomes are discounted is that they are perceived less vividly than more immediate ones. Here we build a brain decoder for the vividness of future thought and apply it to participants’ brain activity when they make decisions to show that the farther the outcomes occur into the future, the less vividly they are processed. This approach showcases the use of brain decoders to index unobtrusively thoughts or feelings that are otherwise difficult to measure.