It turned out that the strength of 'motivation' is related to the amount of chemical substances in the brain
Keeping the 'motivation' high to get things done is important in life, but it's hard to get enough motivation when you want it. Research teams
Glutamine-to-glutamate ratio in the Nucleus accumbens predicts effort-based motivated performance in humans | Neuropsychopharmacology
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0760-6
The (neuro)science of getting and staying motivated | EurekAlert! Science News
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/epfd-to081220.php
Motivation is an important issue in the success and failure of life, but it is also known that there are individual differences in the extent to which one can engage in behaviors that require motivation. The research team focused on the fact that lack of motivation, such as indifference and lethargy, was found in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and mental disorders, and conducted a study targeting a region called the nucleus accumbens in the forebrain. I did it.
The nucleus accumbens is known to play an important role in reward, pleasure, fear, etc., and is also known to be related to motivation. In order to quantify and investigate the motivation, the research team designed a 'task to earn money in exchange for motivation', presenting financial incentives to the subject and engaging in 'behavior-requiring behavior' I heard that.
In this experiment, 43 men aged 20 to 30 were selected as subjects. It seems that the research team specifically measured the amount of metabolites and neurotransmitters in the nucleus accumbens by scanning the subject's brain with an advanced method called proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) .
Each subject then grabbed a device that measured grip strength and repeated the task of getting a monetary reward if they were able to exert 50% of the maximum force they could exert. There are three types of rewards that can be obtained: 0.2 Swiss francs (about 23 yen), 0.5 Swiss francs (about 59 yen), 1 Swiss franc (about 117 yen), and the amount of reward also changes with a certain number of trials. thing. This task was repeated about 120 times with a short break, so it took considerable effort and motivation to keep the subject rewarded.
What was important in this experiment was that 'subjects did not necessarily have to be motivated and continue to receive rewards, and they could cut out depending on the degree of reward and fatigue.' In addition, we prepared a group that was isolated from other subjects and performed the task by only one person, and a group that performed tasks in a situation where they were gathered with other subjects and a sense of competition was born, and the research team placed the subjects. He also observed the difference depending on the situation.
When the team analyzed the results of brain scans and tasks, it was found that 'motivation', which was the key to performance, was significantly associated with the glutamine / glutamic acid ratio in the nucleus accumbens. Subjects with a higher amount of glutamine relative to the amount of glutamic acid in the nucleus accumbens had a “stamina” that kept them motivated and continued to perform the task even in the latter half of the task.
On the other hand, it was also revealed that even a subject with a low amount of glutamine relative to the amount of glutamic acid was motivated in the early stage of the task when the task was performed with someone in a competitive environment. However, in this case, it seems that the motivation decreased as the task progressed, and the research team points out that it was inferior in terms of 'stamina'.
'The findings provide new insights into the field of neuroscience on motivation,' said Carmen Sandi, professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, stating that the balance between glutamine and glutamate is 'a motivated task. Pointed out that it will be useful as a predictor of “performance”. He argued that in the future it could be useful in treating unmotivated people.
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