Now or Later? Exploring the Influence of Interoception and Memory on Delay Discounting

When faced with intertemporal choices – decisions involving tradeoffs between costs and benefits spread over time – humans often forgo better long-term outcomes in favor of immediate rewards, a phenomenon known as delay discounting. Steeper discounting of future re-wards is typically associated with impulsive decisions and behaviors commonly observed in pathological conditions such as addiction and obesity. These maladaptive decision-making pat-terns adversely affect people’s health, prompting researchers into exploring methods for reduc-ing delay discounting. Both interoception and memory-related processes, such as episodic future thinking, have been found to influence delay discounting in both healthy and clinical populations. This thesis aimed to explore the relationship between delay discounting, interoception, and memory. It begins with a general overview of delay discounting and intertemporal choice, including experimental approaches and the neural correlates involved. To establish the influence of interoception and memory on delay discounting, searches were performed across three databases, focusing on articles written in English and involving human participants. The relationships between each concept and delay discounting were further examined within the contexts of obesity and addiction. Evidence suggested that interoception and episodic future thinking are promising targets for reducing delay discounting. However, this thesis also discussed potential shortcomings and discrepancies regarding the results of adopting these approaches, suggesting that combining insights gained from interoception and memory research could be a fruitful strategy for addressing poor delay discounting and its associated maladaptive decisions that negatively impact people’s health, particularly in individuals with obesity and addiction.