Brain Stimulation of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortices Influences Impulsivity in Delay Discounting Choices

Intertemporal decision-making is pivotal for human interests and health. Recently, studies instructed participants to make intertemporal choices for both themselves and others, but the specific mechanisms are still debated. To address the issue, in the current study, the cost-unneeded conditions (i.e., “Self Immediately – Self Delay” and “Other Immediately – Other Delay” conditions) and the cost-needed conditions (i.e., “Self Immediately – Other Delay” and “Self Delay – Other Immediately” conditions) were set with the identity of OTHER being a stranger. We manipulated the magnitude of reward (Experiment 1) and disrupted the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS; Experiment 2). We found that both the behavioral and rTMS manipulations increased smaller but sooner choice probability via reducing self-control function. The reduced self-control function elicited by rTMS affected both self- and other-related intertemporal choices via increasing the choice preference for smaller but sooner reward options, which may help people deeply understand the relationship between self- and other-related intertemporal choices in processing mechanism, especially when the OTHER condition is set as a stranger.