organized white matter are less likely to be drawn to immediate rewards (Olson et al., 2008). It is worth nothing, however, that these findings are hard to reconcile with a recent report from Berns et al. (2009) indicating that structural maturity of white matter is correlated with more, not less, risk-taking. It is too early in the development of this area of work to render an explanation for this apparent inconsistency, but my guess is that research on the behavioral correlates of inter-regional connectivity ultimately may prove more informative than that on the correlates of grey or white matter density, especially in the study of self-regulation.
