Examining self-other intertemporal choices in individuals with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Nardeen Yalda¹ (nardeenyalda2000@gmail.com), Julia G. Halilova¹, Jenkin N.Y. Mok¹, Donna Rose Addis^2,3, Carl F. Craver⁴, R. Shayna Rosenbaum^1,3; ¹Department of Psychology, York University, ²Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, ³Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, ⁴Department of Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis

Decision-making is a fundamental aspect of daily life that often occurs within a social context. Individuals may make choices on behalf of others, such as parents deciding for their children, or policymakers for citizens. One well-established phenomenon in decision-making is delay discounting (DD), where a delay to a future reward decreases its subjective value. Existing evidence suggests that individuals often make more optimal, less impulsive choices—opting for a larger, delayed reward—when deciding for someone else rather than for themselves (e.g., in charitable donation contexts). However, this prior work has largely focused on healthy populations and has not addressed clinical groups known to exhibit steep DD and impaired future imagining, such as individuals with lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The present study investigated how individuals with vmPFC lesions (n = 6) perform on intertemporal choice tasks when comparing decisions made for themselves (“self” condition), for a “close other,” and for an unfamiliar, “average other.” Their performance was compared to that of healthy adults (n = 28) and to individuals with medial temporal lobe (MTL; n = 9) lesions, who are shown to discount similarly to healthy adults despite compromised future imagining. vmPFC-lesion participants demonstrated steeper discounting in the self condition compared to controls and MTL participants. Group differences were not observed when deciding for close or unfamiliar others. These findings suggest the vmPFC’s crucial role in self-related intertemporal decisions, with damage to this region impairing future-oriented decisions for oneself while decisions for others were relatively intact.

Topic Area: THINKING: Decision making