ArticleNeuron2013
Restricting temptations: neural mechanisms of precommitment.
Article in Neuron, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neuropsychological Interventions for Decision-Making in Addiction: a Systematic Review.Neuropsychology review · 2019Pooled it
- The neural basis of motivational influences on cognitive control.Human brain mapping · 2018Pooled it
- A decision-neuroscientific intervention to improve cognitive recovery after stroke.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2021Trial
- The association between anhedonia and prefrontal cortex activation in patients with major depression: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural basis of self-control.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The role of frontal pole cortex and personalized feedback in sustaining future-oriented healthy dietary behaviors.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The effectiveness of revocable precommitment strategies in reducing decision-making impulsivity.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- No evidence for a reciprocal relationship between daily self-control failures and addictive behavior in a longitudinal study.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The Willpower Paradox: Possible and Impossible Conceptions of Self-Control.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2023Article
- Behavioral construction of the future.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2023Review
- Metacognitive deficits are associated with lower sensitivity to preference reversals in nicotine dependence.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Prefrontal contributions to the stability and variability of thought and conscious experience.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- Quantifying the subjective cost of self-control in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Frontopolar theta oscillations link metacognition with prospective decision making.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Model based planners reflect on their model-free propensities.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Self-Controlled Choice Arises from Dynamic Prefrontal Signals That Enable Future Anticipation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Association between childhood trauma and risk for obesity: a putative neurocognitive developmental pathway.BMC medicine · 2020Article
- Willpower with and without effort.The Behavioral and brain sciences · 2020Article
- BOLD activity during emotion reappraisal positively correlates with dietary self-control success.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Humans can resist temptations by exerting willpower, the effortful inhibition of impulses. But willpower can be disrupted by emotions and depleted over time. Luckily, humans can deploy alternative self-control strategies like precommitment, the voluntary restriction of access to temptations. Here, we examined the neural mechanisms of willpower and precommitment using fMRI. Behaviorally, precommitment facilitated choices for large delayed rewards, relative to willpower, especially in more impulsive individuals. While willpower was associated with activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), posterior parietal cortex (PPC), and inferior frontal gyrus, precommitment engaged lateral frontopolar cortex (LFPC). During precommitment, LFPC showed increased functional connectivity with DLPFC and PPC, especially in more impulsive individuals, and the relationship between impulsivity and LFPC connectivity was mediated by value-related activation in ventromedial PFC. Our findings support a hierarchical model of self-control in which LFPC orchestrates precommitment by controlling action plans in more caudal prefrontal regions as a function of expected value.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.