The Neuroscience of Motivation and Persistence

According to the authors, “[Our] results reveal the hidden determinants of fatigue that underlie persistence in the face of effort.” These open-access findings were published on July 28 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.

For this study, UK-based researchers from the University of Birmingham and University of Oxford asked, “What are the hidden internal states that change how we subjectively value effort over time and prevent us from persisting?”

In their paper’s abstract, the authors note that “willingness to work can be characterized by cost-benefit trade-offs, where the value of a reward is subjectively discounted by the effort required to obtain it.” Theoretically, the authors posit that “we are willing to work when we consider the value of a reward worth the effort we have to exert to obtain it.”

Inside the fMRI, when people experienced unrecoverable fatigue during a computer-based task that required physical effort to receive a reward and decided to throw in the towel, their brain scans showed more robust signaling in the middle frontal gyri (MFG) and the anterior Rostral Cingulate Zone (RCZa).

Conversely, if their fatigue was recoverable and they made the effort-based decision to persevere after taking a short break, the posterior Rostral Cingulate Zone (RCZp) of the frontal cortex “lit up.”

Additionally, Müller et al. found that when someone makes an effort-based choice about the value of a reward in relation to how much hard work it requires, a distinct fronto-striatal system is activated that integrates someone’s level of fatigue with the reward’s perceived value. Signaling from the ventral striatum appears to strongly influence people’s motivation to keep working towards a goal.

“This work provides new ways of studying and understanding fatigue, its effects on the brain, and on why it can change some people’s motivation more than others,” senior author Matthew Apps added. “This helps begin to get to grips with something that affects many patients’ lives, as well as people while at work, school, and even elite athletes.”

In closing, when I filter the latest research by Muller et al. through the lens of my own life experience as an elite-level athlete who had to persevere and find ways to sustain my motivation during ultra-endurance challenges, the most intriguing part of this study is how the ventral striatum seems to make “fatigue vs. value” calculations.

Although this UCL study didn’t specifically look at how the fronto-striatal system influences neural representations of usefulness during goal-directed behavior, one could speculate that visualizing the usefulness of a goal might also affect how the ventral striatum integrates fatigue vs. value when assessing an effort-based choice.

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