How the brain prioritizes urgent goals over non-urgent goals

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How does our brain distinguish between urgent and less urgent goals? Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Icahn School of Medicine in New York have investigated how our brain remembers and adjusts the goals we set for ourselves every day. Their research reveals differences in the way we process immediate and distant goals, at both behavioral and cerebral levels. These discoveries, described in the journal Nature Communications, could have significant implications for understanding psychiatric disorders, especially depression, which can hinder the formulation of clear goals.

During the day, we set ourselves goals that we want to achieve: pick up the kids from school in an hour, prepare dinner in three hours, make a doctor’s appointment in five days, or mow the lawn in a week. These goals, both urgent and less urgent, are constantly redefined based on the events that occur during the day.

Researchers from UNIGE and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mont Sinai Hospital in New York have investigated how the brain remembers and updates the goals to be achieved. More specifically, how the brain determines which goals require immediate attention and which do not. Their research focused on a particular part of the brain, the hippocampus, because of its established role in episodic memory. This is responsible for encoding, consolidating and retrieving personally experienced information, integrating its emotional, spatial and temporal context.

An imaginary mission to Mars, in the time of an MRI scan

Neuroscientists asked 31 people to project themselves into an imaginary four-year space mission to Mars, during which they had to achieve a series of objectives that were crucial to their survival (taking care of their space helmet, getting exercise, eating certain foods, etc.). The mission objectives varied depending on when they were to be achieved, with different tasks for each of the four years of the journey.

As participants progressed through the mission, they were presented with the same objectives. They were then asked to indicate whether these were past, present, or future goals. As participants moved forward in time, the relevance of these goals changed: goals initially planned for the future became current needs, while current needs became past goals. In this way, the participants had to manage different objectives at different distances in time and update their priorities as their mission progressed.

Prioritize immediate goals

The team observed each individual’s reaction times to determine whether the task would be performed in the present, past or future. ‘Goals that need to be achieved immediately are recognized more quickly than goals that need to be achieved in the distant future. This differential processing of stored information reveals the priority given to needs in the present over those in the distant future. It takes extra time to mentally travel back in time to retrieve past and future goals,” explains Alison Montagrin, Research and Education Officer at the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, former postdoctoral researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine. Medicine, and first author of the study.

The scientists also investigated whether differences were also visible at the cerebral level. Images obtained using very high-resolution MRI revealed that when retrieving information about the present, the hippocampus in the posterior region is activated. On the other hand, when recalling past goals or goals to be achieved in the future, the anterior region is activated.

”These results are particularly interesting because previous studies have shown that when we rely on our episodic memory or our spatial memory, the anterior part of the hippocampus is involved in retrieving general information, while the posterior part deals with details. . It will therefore be interesting to investigate whether – unlike immediate goals – projection into the future or remembering a past goal does not require specific details, but whether a general representation is sufficient,” the researcher concludes.

This research shows that the time scale plays a crucial role in the way people set personal goals. This could have important implications for understanding psychiatric disorders such as depression. Indeed, people suffering from depression may experience difficulty formulating specific goals and imagine more obstacles in achieving their goals. Investigating whether these people perceive the distance to their goals differently – which could make them pessimistic about their chances of success – could open a therapeutic avenue.

Reference: Montagrin A, Croote DE, Preti MG, Lerman L, Baxter MG, Schiller D. The hippocampus separates the present from past and future goals. Nat Commun. 2024;15(1):4815. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-48648-9

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