Training Self-Control: A Domain-General Translational Neuroscience Approach

Abstract

Self-control plays an important role in healthy development and has been shown to be amenable to intervention. This article presents a theoretical framework for the emerging area of "brain-training" interventions that includes both laboratory-based direct training methods and ecologically valid school-, family-, and community-based interventions. Although these approaches have proliferated in recent years, evidence supporting them is just beginning to emerge, and conceptual models underlying many of the techniques they employ tend to be underspecified and imprecise. Identifying the neural systems responsible for improvements in self-control may be of tremendous benefit not only for overall intervention efficacy but also for basic science issues related to underlying shared biological mechanisms of psychopathology. This article reviews the neurodevelopment of self-control and explores its implications for theory, intervention, and prevention. It then presents a neurally informed framework for understanding self-control development and change and discusses how this framework may inform future intervention strategies for individuals suffering with psychopathology or drug abuse/dependence, or for young children with delays in cognitive or emotional functioning.

Keywords: executive function; inferior frontal gyrus; self-control; training; transfer.

Figure 1

A neurally informed model of domain-general inhibitory control and how it can be applied to intervention. Note. A set of brain regions (including inferior frontal gyrus, presupplementary motor area, subthalamic nucleus, and basal ganglia) are involved in inhibitory control in the behavioral, affective, and cognitive domains. Successful intervention to modulate one domain will transfer to the others, influencing proximal outcomes related to inhibitory control and, eventually, long-term physical and mental health outcomes.