Inter-temporal decision-making is ubiquitous in daily life and has been considered as a critical characteristic associated with an individual’s success. Such decisions require us to tradeoff between short-term and long-term benefits. Prior studies have indicated that inter-temporal decision involves various brain regions that tend to occupy the central hubs. However, it is unclear whether the functional connectivities among hub as well as non-hub regions can predict discounting behaviors. Here, we combined with graph-theoretical algorithm and multivariate pattern analysis to explore whether voxel-wise functional connectivity strength in the whole brain could predict discounting rates (indexed as logk, based on the adaptive delay-discounting task) in a relatively large sample (n = 429) of young adults. Results revealed that short- and long-distance as well as all-range non-hub functional connectivity strength in the limbic system (i.e., medial orbitofrontal cortex and parahippocampus) were inversely associated with discounting rates. Furthermore, these results were robust and did not appear to be due to potential confounding factors. Above weight-based degree metric is commonly indicative of the communication pattern of local and global parallel information processing, and it therefore provides novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying inter-temporal decision-making from the perspective of human brain topological organizations.

跨期决策在日常生活中无处不在，被认为是与个人成功相关的关键特征。这样的决定要求我们在短期和长期利益之间进行权衡。先前的研究表明，跨时决策涉及往往占据中心枢纽的各个大脑区域。然而，尚不清楚枢纽和非枢纽区域之间的功能连接是否可以预测折扣行为。在这里，我们结合图论算法和多元模式分析，探索在相对较大的样本中，全脑的体素功能连接强度是否可以预测贴现率（索引为logk，基于自适应延迟贴现任务）（n = 429) 的年轻人。结果显示，边缘系统（即内侧眶额皮质和海马旁）的短距离和长距离以及全范围非中枢功能连接强度与贴现率呈负相关。此外，这些结果是稳健的，似乎不是由于潜在的混杂因素。上述基于权重的度度量通常表示局部和全局并行信息处理的通信模式，因此它从人脑拓扑组织的角度提供了对跨时决策背后的神经机制的新见解。