
Researchers at UT Austin recorded neural activity in monkeys playing a computer game that triggered automatic responses. They found that self-control does not work by turning down activity in the brain's habit center, the striatum. Instead, the orbitofrontal cortex jams the striatum's signals, disrupting the autopilot mechanism while total neural activity remains the same.
This mechanism offers a clearer physical picture of why impulse control fails in addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Still, the work is based on non-human primates performing a narrow computer task, and translating these specific circuit dynamics to human clinical treatment remains a long way off.
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