Abstract：
Taste and health are critical factors to be considered when choosing foods. Prioritizing healthiness over tastiness requires self-control. It has also been suggested that self-control is guided by cognitive control. We then hypothesized that neural mechanisms underlying healthy food choice are associated with both self-control and cognitive control. Human participants performed a food choice task and a working memory task during functional MRI scanning. Their degree of self-control was assessed behaviorally by the value discount of delayed monetary rewards in intertemporal choice. Prioritizing healthiness in food choice was associated with greater activity in the superior, dorsolateral, and medial prefrontal cortices. Importantly, the prefrontal activity was greater in individuals with smaller delay discounting (i.e. high self-control) who preferred a delayed larger reward to an immediate smaller reward in intertemporal choice. On the other hand, working memory activity did not show a correlation with delay discounting or food choice activity, which was further supported by supplementary results that analyzed data from the Human Connectome Project. Our results suggest that the prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in healthy food choice, which requires self-control, but not working memory, for maximization of reward attainments in a remote future.
摘要：
口味和健康是选择食物时要考虑的关键因素。健康优先于美味需要自我控制。也有人提出，自我控制是由认知控制指导的。然后，我们假设健康食物选择的神经机制与自我控制和认知控制有关。人类参与者在功能性MRI扫描期间执行食物选择任务和工作记忆任务。通过跨期选择中延迟货币奖励的价值折扣，从行为上评估了他们的自我控制程度。在食物选择中优先考虑健康与上级的更多活动有关，背外侧,和内侧前额皮质。重要的是,在跨期选择中,延迟折扣较小(即自我控制力较高)的个体的前额叶活动更大,他们更喜欢延迟较大的奖励,而不是即时较小的奖励.另一方面,工作记忆活动与延迟折扣或食物选择活动没有相关性，这得到了补充结果的进一步支持，这些结果分析了来自人类Connectome项目的数据。我们的研究结果表明，前额叶皮层在健康的食物选择中起着至关重要的作用，这需要自我控制，但不是工作记忆，在遥远的未来实现奖励成就的最大化。
