University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2012 Apr;50(5):939-48. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.01.033. Epub 2012 Feb 7.
The human tendency to acquire and keep large quantities of goods has become a serious concern, but has yet to be examined from a neuroscientific perspective. The mesolimbocortical system, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAcc), is implicated when humans and animals acquire rewards. However, this may not extend to acquisitiveness per se, which involves fairly mundane items and is interconnected with a failure to discard. Moreover, the NAcc has not been implicated in neuroimaging studies of the extreme acquisitiveness of compulsive hoarders. In a study of the neural bases of normal acquisitiveness, subjects made decisions during functional neuroimaging to acquire or remove everyday items from a hypothetical collection, while maximizing personal preference or monetary profit. All decisions engaged the OFC, but the OFC and all regions of interest shifted in their relative involvement across the four decision contexts. The NAcc was only engaged during personal acquisition to the extent of problematic hoarding, suggesting that even common items can acquire an incentive salience that makes them hard to resist for acquisitive individuals. The types of items preferred also shifted with condition, with subjects only being biased toward expensive items when instructed to maximize profit. Item preferences even differed depending on whether participants were acquiring versus removing items, even though the task only differed superficially in the two conditions. Acquisitiveness reflects a complex mix of affective, cognitive, and personality factors that extend well beyond the drive to acquire valuable resources, with important implications for basic decision science, sustainability, and pathologies associated with compulsive acquisition.
人类获取和保留大量物品的倾向已成为一个严重的问题,但尚未从神经科学的角度进行研究。中脑边缘系统,特别是眶额皮层(OFC)和伏隔核(NAcc),在人类和动物获取奖励时会被涉及。然而,这可能不适用于本身的占有欲,因为它涉及到相当平凡的物品,并且与无法丢弃有关。此外,在对强迫囤积者的极端占有欲的神经影像学研究中,并未涉及 NAcc。在一项关于正常占有欲的神经基础的研究中,被试者在功能神经影像学检查中做出决定,以获取或从假设的收藏中删除日常物品,同时最大限度地提高个人偏好或货币利润。所有决定都涉及到 OFC,但在四个决策情境中,OFC 和所有感兴趣的区域在其相对参与度上都发生了变化。NAcc 仅在个人获取时与有问题的囤积行为有关,这表明即使是常见的物品也可以获得激励的显著性,从而使具有占有欲的个体难以抗拒。偏好的物品类型也随着条件的变化而变化,只有在被指示最大化利润时,被试者才会偏向昂贵的物品。即使任务在两种条件下仅在表面上有所不同,参与者的物品偏好甚至也有所不同。占有欲反映了复杂的情感、认知和个性因素的混合,远远超出了获取有价值资源的驱动力,对基础决策科学、可持续性以及与强迫性获取相关的病理学具有重要意义。