When striking a balance between commitment to a goal and flexibility in the face of better options, people often demonstrate strong goal perseveration. Here, using functional MRI (n = 30) and lesion patient (n = 26) studies, we argue that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) drives goal commitment linked to changes in goal-directed selective attention. Participants performed an incremental goal pursuit task involving sequential decisions between persisting with a goal versus abandoning progress for better alternative options. Individuals with stronger goal perseveration showed higher goal-directed attention in an interleaved attention task. Increasing goal-directed attention also affected abandonment decisions: while pursuing a goal, people lost their sensitivity to valuable alternative goals while remaining more sensitive to changes in the current goal. In a healthy population, individual differences in both commitment biases and goal-oriented attention were predicted by baseline goal-related activity in the vmPFC. Among lesion patients, vmPFC damage reduced goal commitment, leading to a performance benefit.

当在对目标的承诺和面对更好选择时的灵活性之间取得平衡时，人们常常表现出强烈的目标毅力。在这里，通过功能性 MRI（n  = 30）和病变患者（n  = 26）的研究，我们认为腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）驱动与目标导向选择性注意力变化相关的目标承诺。参与者执行增量目标追求任务，涉及坚持目标与放弃进步以寻求更好的替代选择之间的连续决策。目标毅力较强的个体在交错注意力任务中表现出更高的目标导向注意力。增加目标导向的注意力也会影响放弃决策：在追求目标的过程中，人们失去了对有价值的替代目标的敏感性，但对当前目标的变化仍然更加敏感。在健康人群中，承诺偏差和目标导向注意力的个体差异是通过 vmPFC 中与目标相关的基线活动来预测的。在病变患者中，vmPFC 损伤降低了目标承诺，从而导致表现改善。