The Functional Architecture of Self-Regulation: Network-Level Control Parameters of Regulatory Focus in Normative Adult and Adolescent Samples
Regulatory focus theory distinguishes promotion- and prevention-related motivational systems that support adaptive goal pursuit and are implicated in vulnerability to internalizing psychopathology. Prior neuroimaging work has characterized where in the brain these systems are instantiated, but has offered less insight into how they are organized as integrated control networks. We reanalyzed fMRI data from previously published normative adult (N = 48) and normative adolescent (N = 47) samples using a common region-of-interest framework derived from the adult activation maps. Three masks were constructed based on voxel-wise overlap across conditions: a core network capturing voxels active across multiple goal-priming conditions; a promotion-only network capturing promotion-selective processing; and a prevention-only network capturing prevention-selective processing. Within each mask, we derived per-subject parameters indexing system strength and signal differentiation for each motivational domain, and estimated cross-system coupling as the correlations among these parameters across individuals. In both age groups, promotion and prevention magnitudes varied largely independently, and within-system match–mismatch coupling was weak, consistent with a distributed architecture in which promotion and prevention share a representational backbone but operate with substantial differentiation. Adolescents showed significant cross-system coordination of match signals that was absent in adults. These findings support a set of network-level self-regulatory control parameters—strength, differentiation, and cross-system coupling—as a principled vocabulary for the functional architecture of regulatory focus specifically and self-regulation more generally, and provide a normative baseline against which perturbation by adversity, psychopathology, or intervention can be evaluated.
