Research Hit: How Your Brain Sets Priorities
New research shows that the hippocampus in the brain processes immediate goals first.
Isn’t the hippocampus more responsible for memory and not setting priorities?
Yes, that is true, but you have to recall a goal to be able to prioritise it. And this is what a team of researchers from the University of Geneva, here in Switzerland, and the Icahn School of Medicine, in New York explored.
Specifically they wanted to investigate how the brain distinguishes and prioritises between different goals and how this is represented behaviourally, ie. in what we do, and in the brain itself.
And how did they do this - sounds hard to measure?
Yes, indeed and the answer is though a mars mission!
A mars mission!?
Yes, sounds strange but to make the goals the same for everyone and change the goals over time, the 31 participants went through a simulated mars mission with multiple goals that changed after they had completed each.
They measured response times to these different goals and also could therefore map the exact same goals across the 31 participants in a brain scanner.
And what did they find then?
Something that can explain how we sometimes fail to get onto future goals - it also partly explains procrastination.
Namely that goals that need to be achieved immediately are recognised more quickly than those that need to be achieved in the future. This is also because the brain processes future (and past goals) differently. Specifically past or future goals activate the anterior hippocampus wheres immediate goals are processed in the posterior hippocampus.
This shows that temporally different goals are processed in different parts of the brain and this changes reaction times to these goals also.
Wow - so there’s different brain representations: this can explain quite a bit - also how we don’t plan right?
Yes, it also partly explains why we don’t plan well enough if we are constantly prioritising current goals, we can fall short on planning. It also partly explains procrastination.
This could also be in other disorders - time representations may make a big difference - on the counter side it could also explain why some people can’t get onto current goals if time representations are distorted.
So, bring some of your future goals into the present to prioritise them!
Yes indeed. This explains why it is easier to focus on current goals but we also need to make sure we focus on future goals - or better, break these down to include current goals to activate the brain better to these.
Reference
Alison Montagrin, Denise E. Croote, Maria Giulia Preti, Liron Lerman, Mark G. Baxter, Daniela Schiller.
The hippocampus dissociates present from past and future goals.
Nature Communications, 2024; 15 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48648-9