Research Hit: Your Brain on Persevering or Giving Up

Keeping going under mental fatigue is controlled by distinct regions in the brain

Isn’t this a part of general resilience?

Well it could be, but this research focused on inducing mental fatigue and seeing what parts of the brain were in involved in the decision to keep going — or give up.

So what parts of the brain are involved?

Let me explain the study first of all:
Grace Steward et al. of John Hopkins recruited 28 healthy adults to participate in this study. They engaged in working memory tasks that induced fatigue — this was remembering letters and their positions on a screen. After each round they reported their mental fatigue and willingness to continue. They were also offered additional cash incentives to engage in more tasks, and increasingly difficult tasks.

So simple financial motivation?

Yes!

And did this work?

Yes, it did. But what is more interesting is what is happening in the brain.

What was happening?

There was an interplay in two regions. Firstly a region called the insula — this region is involved in bodily perceptions and is also…