Electrophysiological Prints of Grit
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Frontiers Research Foundation
Materia
Grit EEG Theta/beta ratio (TBR) Entropy Fractal dimension Impulsiveness
Date
2021-10-14Referencia bibliográfica
Aguerre NV... [et al.] (2021) Electrophysiological Prints of Grit. Front. Psychol. 12:730172. doi: [10.3389/fpsyg.2021.730172]
Sponsorship
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities and the Andalusian Government (Fondos FEDER) ES-2016-078667 A-CTS-111-UGR18 PGC2018-093786-B-I00 PSI2015-65502-C2-2-PAbstract
While scientific interest in understanding the grit trait has grown exponentially in recent
years, one important gap in the grit literature relates to its biological and neural substrate.
In the present study, we adopted a hypotheses-driven approach in a large sample of
young adults (N = 120) with diverse educational backgrounds and work experiences
in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of grit both during rest and
while performing a learning task. Additionally, we selected a measure of impulsiveness
to better understand the neural similarities and differences between grit and related
self-control constructs. Based on previous work that implicated the prefrontal cortex in
grit, we hypothesized that high grit participants would have lower frontal theta/beta ratio
(a broadly used index that reflects prefrontally-mediated top–down processes, which
might indicate better control over subcortical information). Furthermore, we expected
the perseverance of effort facet of grit to be linked to higher complexity during task
engagement because previous research has shown complexity indexes (entropy and
fractal dimension) to be linked to effort while performing cognitive tasks. Our results
revealed that although there were no differences at rest as a function of grit, the
participants with high grit and high consistency of interest scores exhibited lower frontal
theta/beta ratios during the learning task. This pattern suggests that individual differences
in gritmight bemore evident when top-down control processes are at work. Furthermore,
there was a positive association between perseverance of effort and entropy at task,
which might indicate more effort and engagement in the task. Finally, no association was
found between the neural indexes (frontal theta/beta ratio, entropy, or fractal dimension)
and impulsiveness, neither impulsiveness mediated between grit and brain measures.
Finally, when controlling for impulsiveness and demographic variables (gender, age,
education, and work experience) the effects at the facet level remained statistically
significant. While there is still a long way to fully understand the neural mechanisms of
grit, the present work constitutes a step toward unveiling the electrophysiological prints
of grit.