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General self-control, and therefore the likelihood of choosing healthy food, can be predicted. An international team of researchers did this by studying differences in brain structure.
Predicting Overweight
I didn’t plan it, but this week there are three articles focusing on genetic predisposition to overweight. Identifying factors that put you at a disadvantage in the fight against overweight. Factors that make nutrition and sufficient exercise a struggle. Coincidentally because new research has been published on various aspects. Previous articles focused on increased hunger or reduced metabolism due to genetic mutations.
Such insights don’t prevent the solution from often remaining the same: You will have to make more effort for a healthy energy balance than someone else. More discipline, more perseverance, more motivation. But what if you’re already dependent on certain settings of your body for that? If the little devil on your shoulder shouts in your ear through a megaphone while the angel whispers?
Self-control
Self-control is an important predictor of many aspects of life. The degree of self-control can mean the difference between a successful and healthy life or an unhealthy life consisting of crime, drug, and alcohol use. Based on self-control as determined in youth, you can even predict who will look like 30 at the age of 40 and who will look like 50.
A few years ago, I attended
The Anatomical Lesson at the AMC. An annual lecture with a new topic each year in medical and related sciences. That year it was about self-control. A married couple of scientists had been researching the influence of self-control for years. They showed us the results of a large-scale study on self-control and its effects over a long period measured in many areas. It was quite an eye-opener and I have written about it here before.
The day before yesterday, I wrote about genetic factors influencing your hunger and satiety. How hungry you feel is not only a matter of your energy needs, but also of genetic factors that can mislead you. Self-control is the system that enables you to ignore this voice. To resist that slice of pizza while your body seems to be screaming for it. Because you know better. Because you postpone the small reward now for a bigger reward later.
What is self-control?
Because that’s exactly what self-control means. Delaying or resisting a reward now for a bigger reward later. The well-known example given in the AMC lecture was the marshmallow test.
Leave a child alone in a room with a marshmallow on the table, or another treat. Before leaving the child alone, tell them they are free to eat the marshmallow. However, if they leave it, they will get two marshmallows upon the return of the person administering the test. This is, of course, not how the researchers tested children for self-control in the large study back then. This was done by measuring a large number of indicators for self-control. This is just a simple example.
They showed us some correlations. Including photos of participants and how they had aged. People with low self-control generally aged much worse due to other choices in lifestyle. Education was lower, crime, alcohol, and drug use were higher.
Your genes, environment, and all the opportunities you encounter in life are tools and resources. How and whether you use these tools is largely determined by self-control.
Self-control and (self) discipline
You could compare this to discipline although that word originally doesn’t carry the same weight. Throughout the centuries, discipline has mainly meant discipline, or following a certain doctrine and rules. Things you adhere to, taking into account possible consequences. Like obeying the law to avoid punishment.
Self-discipline comes closer because there is no external motivator, but an intrinsic one. You value safety and therefore adhere to the speed limit. Not to avoid fines.
The word discipline often also indicates an adopted doctrine or lifestyle, adopted behavior over a period of time. Self-discipline has therefore also been described as “self-control exercised over a long period”. Good behavior that develops into a routine or habit through repetition. In practice, however, the words are often used interchangeably.
Differences in self-control identifiable in the brain
What causes some people to naturally have a high degree of self-control and others considerably less? The researchers of the international team refer to studies linking such differences to individual differences in real-time brain activity. In the current study, the researchers wanted to find out if they could also find more ‘stable differences’ in brain anatomy. Differences that they could find in larger groups and which could explain the differences in self-control.
They used data collected from three previous studies and created a new dataset based on this. From this data, it appeared that a larger volume of gray matter in the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex was associated with more self-control regarding diet. Simply put; they found measurable differences somewhere in the brain that could explain differences in self-control.
Predicting Self-control
On the one hand, such a discovery is a bit discouraging, even scary.
Discouraging because it adds to all the ways in which your body’s settings can ensure that your emotional needs and consumption do not align well with your environment. You can have too much hunger and too low a metabolism due to certain genetic abnormalities. As if that weren’t enough, it may also turn out that you have little self-control. Good luck.
Scary because self-control, as mentioned, can predict much more than just your health. Suppose you want to use this data to identify the potential for crime in people? It has been over twenty years since the movie
Gattaca came out. Selection for (or exclusion from) certain professions based on your DNA is still not a reality, but the possibility of doing so is increasing.</ p>
On the other, more positive, side: Identifying the chance of a lower level of self-control can indicate in diet groups like in the research who needs extra help and guidance. Also regarding self-control itself, there is hope according to the researchers. Because brain structure and connectivity can change over time under the influence of lifestyle, the designated areas could also be the target of new therapies.
Reference
- Liane Schmidt, Anita Tusche, Nicolas Manoharan, Cendri Hutcherson, Todd Hare, Hilke Plassmann. Neuroanatomy of the vmPFC and dlPFC predicts individual differences in cognitive regulation during dietary self-control across regulation strategies. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2018; 3402-17 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3402-17.2018
