Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – Scientists at the University of California San Diego have pinpointed 11 genetic regions tied to delay discounting — the inclination to choose smaller, immediate rewards instead of larger rewards that arrive later. Their findings offer new insight into how impulsive choices connect to both mental and physical well-being. The research, published on November 25, 2025, in Molecular Psychiatry, examined genome-wide data from 134,935 23andMe participants and revealed that the genetic influences behind impulsive decisions also overlap with risks for metabolic conditions such as obesity and diabetes.
Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and the study’s senior author indicated that everyone experiences impulsive tendencies to some degree, but their biological foundation has been surprisingly hard to understand.
She further pointed out that their results suggest that delay discounting is not only a behavioral pattern — it is closely connected to genetic networks involved in brain development, thinking processes, and physical health.
Expanding on an earlier and much smaller genome-wide association study, the researchers identified 11 separate genetic regions and 93 possible genes linked to delay discounting. Many of these genes play roles in dopamine signaling, neuron growth, metabolic activity, and brain structure — systems also tied to psychiatric conditions, obesity, chronic pain, and even academic performance. Further analysis uncovered genetic links between delay discounting and 73 other traits, including substance use, depression, digestive problems, and sleep duration.
The team also performed a network analysis to uncover shared biological pathways across these traits. Abraham A. Palmer, Ph.D., professor and vice chair for basic research in UC San Diego’s Department of Psychiatry and a co-author on the study indicated that they have discovered clusters of interconnected systems — especially those related to cognition, metabolism, and externalizing behaviors — that may help explain why delay discounting appears in so many mental health disorders.
Additional tests showed that many of these associations remained even after accounting for cognitive factors like IQ and educational achievement, suggesting that delay discounting has its own partly independent genetic foundation.
To understand how these findings translate to real-world health effects, the researchers built polygenic scores for delay discounting and applied them to a hospital dataset of over 66,000 patients.
The first author Hayley Thorpe, Ph.D., a visiting scholar in Sanchez-Roige’s lab and postdoctoral fellow at Western University indicated that they found that these scores—which reflect a genetic inclination toward choosing smaller, immediate rewards—were linked to 212 health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, ischemic heart disease, mood disorders, and tobacco use disorder.
Thorpe further pointed out that this shows that impulsive decision-making could play a role in shaping long-term health risks.
“Understanding the genetic and biological roots of delay discounting opens up many new possibilities,” explained Sanchez-Roige. “In the future, delay discounting could become a clinically useful marker, one that helps us improve behavioral and pharmacological treatments aimed at impulsivity.” Unlike many studies that examine the causes of specific disease, “these studies explore the genetic basis of trans-diagnostic genetic tendencies, which are the fundamental building blocks that influence people’s behavior throughout life and are interwoven with disease susceptibility, as well as economic and social outcomes” said Palmer.
The researchers point out that although the study highlights several promising genetic leads, more work is needed to understand the causal links and to determine whether changing delay-discounting behavior could lead to better health outcomes. They also stress the importance of confirming the newly identified genetic associations and conducting studies that incorporate environmental influences like socioeconomic conditions.
Sanchez-Roige indicated that delay discounting is measurable, highly heritable as well as appropriate for many parts of health.
