Albert Einstein once said, “It’s not that I’m smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Tenacity—the ability to persist in the face of challenges and setbacks—has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to research connecting it to the successful achievement of long-term goals.

But is tenacity simply a function of how strong your willpower is? And what is its biological basis?

In a review in the journal Cortex earlier this year, a team of Mass General researchers led by Alexandra Touroutoglou, PhD, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, offer a compelling case for the role of a part of the brain called the anterior mid cingulate cortex (aMCC) in individual levels of tenacity.

They suggest that the thickness of this part of the cerebral cortex, and the strength of its connections to other brain regions, might explain why some individuals are more prone to persist in the face of challenges and setbacks, while others give up.

A Highly Networked Hub

The aMCC is one of the most connected parts of the brain. It is located in the frontal lobe of the brain on the medial portion of each cerebral hemisphere, just above the corpus callosum. The aMCC is part of a group of densely connected brain regions, called “rich club hubs,”  that function as the backbone of communication across the entire brain.

The aMCC is important for processing signals related to:

Controlling the Internal Systems of Your Body:  A process called “visceromotor” control, meaning control of the visceral systems, including the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, and so on, as well as control of the immune and endocrine systems.

Motor Planning: The ability to plan and carry out a set of coordinated movements needed to complete a behavior (e.g., reaching for a cup, bringing it to your lips, and taking a drink to quench your thirst).

Allostasis: The process by which the brain balances the various bodily systems, defined as predicting the body’s energy needs and attempting to meet those needs before they arise (e.g., executing a cortisol release when the brain believes there is a quick need for glucose).

Interoception: Modeling the sensory changes in the body that result from visceromotor control and allostasis.

Affect: Features of consciousness that range from feelings of comfort to discomfort, pleasure to displeasure, activity to quiescence (a state of inactivity) that results from ongoing interoception.

Value: The process of estimating the reward value of an energy output (e.g., exercise is an immediate investment of energy that offers the value of long-term rewards).

Executive Control: Allows for planning, focusing attention, inhibiting unwanted actions or thoughts, sustaining attention, juggling multiple tasks and monitoring what you are doing to facilitate the successful execution of a goal (e.g., playing your first piano piece).

Sensory Integration: Combines and integrates information from all your senses—seeing, hearing, smelling, etc., including interoception (e.g., using hand-eye coordination to pour water in the glass, feeling the glass become cooler as it fills with cold water as you lift it to drink)

These scientific findings suggests the aMCC plays a central role in estimating the energy requirements for predicting motor and visceromotor movements, allocating attention to encode new information, adjusting predictions as needed based on that new information, and executing the physical movements that are required to achieve a goal—such as pouring a glass of water, playing the guitar or training for a marathon.

Calculating Reward vs. Effort

How the aMCC weighs the effort required to achieve a goal vs. the reward of achieving that goal is likely to differ between individuals—particularly when the cost of effort is high and rewards are uncertain or deferred.

“An individual might continue to exert effort on a demanding task because she estimates the value of an expected reward as greater than others do, because he perceives the cost of action as lower than others do, or because she perceives the body’s resources to be relatively greater,” the authors write.

“Under these circumstances, some will demonstrate tenacity and persist while others may simply quit.”

It’s possible that that neuroanatomical integrity (gray matter volume and cortical thickness) of the aMCC and its ability to communicate with other regions of the brain (its range and strength of connectivity), could contribute to the brain’s assessments of effort vs. reward.

Future Applications

So does this mean that individuals with thinner, less connected aMCCs are less likely to achieve goals that require time and effort? Not necessarily.

Evidence suggests that regular physical exercise can increase aMCC volume, as well as improve memory and other cognitive abilities. So it may be possible to physically “train up” their aMCC.

For example, increases in aMCC volume could help individuals with obesity lose weight by increasing their willingness to engage in difficult exercise, and by boosting their resistance to seeking out food-related rewards, the authors write.

“As a flexible hub, the aMCC may be better equipped than other brain regions to reshape its connectivity in response to learning.”

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