Kelley William M, Wagner Dylan D, Heatherton Todd F
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755; email:
Annu Rev Neurosci. 2015 Jul 8;38:389-411. doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014243. Epub 2015 Apr 30.
The capacity for self-regulation allows people to control their thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and desires. In spite of this impressive ability, failures of self-regulation are common and contribute to numerous societal problems, from obesity to drug addiction. Such failures frequently occur following exposure to highly tempting cues, during negative moods, or after self-regulatory resources have been depleted. Here we review the available neuroscientific evidence regarding self-regulation and its failures. At its core, self-regulation involves a critical balance between the strength of an impulse and an individual's ability to inhibit the desired behavior. Although neuroimaging and patient studies provide consistent evidence regarding the reward aspects of impulses and desires, the neural mechanisms that underlie the capacity for control have eluded consensus, with various executive control regions implicated in different studies. We outline the necessary properties for a self-regulation control system and suggest that the use of resting-state functional connectivity analyses may be useful for understanding how people regulate their behavior and why they sometimes fail in their attempts.
自我调节能力使人们能够控制自己的思想、行为、情绪和欲望。尽管有这种令人印象深刻的能力，但自我调节失败却很常见，并导致了许多社会问题，从肥胖到药物成瘾。这种失败经常发生在接触极具诱惑的线索之后、处于消极情绪期间或自我调节资源被耗尽之后。在这里，我们回顾了关于自我调节及其失败的现有神经科学证据。从本质上讲，自我调节涉及冲动强度与个体抑制期望行为能力之间的关键平衡。尽管神经影像学和患者研究提供了关于冲动和欲望的奖励方面的一致证据，但控制能力背后的神经机制尚未达成共识，不同的研究涉及到各种执行控制区域。我们概述了自我调节控制系统的必要属性，并表明使用静息态功能连接分析可能有助于理解人们如何调节自己的行为以及他们有时为何在尝试中失败。
