Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is well‐known for its role in exerting mental work, however the contribution of DLPFC for deciding whether or not to engage in effort remains unknown. Here, we assessed the causal role of DLPFC in effort‐based decision making. We disrupted functioning of DLPFC with noninvasive brain stimulation before participants repeatedly decided whether to exert mental effort in a working memory task. We found the same DLPFC subregion involved in mental effort exertion to influence also effort‐based decisions: First, it enhanced effort discounting, suggesting that DLPFC may signal the capacity to successfully deal with effort demands. Second, a novel computational model integrating the costs of enduring effort into the effort‐based decision process revealed that DLPFC disruption reduced fatigue after accumulated effort exertion, linking DLPFC activation with fatigue. Together, our findings indicate that in effort‐based decisions DLPFC represents the capacity to exert mental effort and the updating of this information with enduring time‐on‐task, informing theoretical accounts on the role of DLPFC in the motivation to exert mental effort and the fatigue arising from it.

中文翻译：

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外侧前额叶皮层在脑力劳动和疲劳中的因果作用。

背外侧前额叶皮层 (DLPFC) 以其在脑力劳动中的作用而闻名，但 DLPFC 对决定是否参与努力的贡献仍然未知。在这里，我们评估了 DLPFC 在基于努力的决策中的因果作用。在参与者反复决定是否在工作记忆任务中发挥脑力之前，我们用无创脑刺激扰乱了 DLPFC 的功能。我们发现，同样的 DLPFC 子区域也参与了脑力劳动，以影响基于努力的决策：首先，它增强了努力贴现，表明 DLPFC 可能标志着成功处理努力需求的能力。第二，一个新的计算模型将持久努力的成本整合到基于努力的决策过程中，表明 DLPFC 中断减少了累积努力后的疲劳，将 DLPFC 激活与疲劳联系起来。总之，我们的研究结果表明，在基于努力的决策中，DLPFC 代表了施加精神努力的能力，以及通过持久的任务时间更新这些信息，为理论解释 DLPFC 在施加精神努力的动机和疲劳由此产生。