Whether you’re enduring a long wait at a popular new restaurant or holding on for just a few more minutes to catch a post-credits scene after a movie, the choice to stick it out or walk away hinges on specific areas of our brains.
Waiting isn’t solely about self-control; it also involves assessing the value of the potential reward. In a study examining wait times in individuals with lesions in the frontal cortex, psychologist Joe Kable from the University of Pennsylvania and his research team discovered that participants with damage to particular regions of the prefrontal cortex were less inclined to wait.
“Our findings indicate that different regions of the frontal cortex contribute uniquely to adaptive persistence,” Kable and his team stated in their research published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The Science of Waiting
Kable focused on individuals with damage to three areas of the prefrontal cortex: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior insula. The behavior of these subjects was compared with both healthy participants and those with lesions in other areas of the frontal cortex.
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is crucial for action control, memory, and decision-making, while the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex plays an even more significant role in decision-making and helps regulate cognition, emotion, and actions. The anterior insula is responsible for processing subjective feelings. The performance of participants with lesions in these regions was assessed against healthy controls and those with lesions in different frontal cortex areas.
In the experiment, participants sat in front of a computer screen and were informed that a coin would appear. This coin was designed to increase in value over time and would change color once it reached maturity. When ready, participants could press the space bar to receive a 10-cent reward. However, they could also press the space bar before the coin matured to end the wait and generate a new coin, though doing so meant forgoing the reward.