The vast range of temporal discounting behavior – from patient real-world investments to impulsive laboratory choices – presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Research using human participants will need to test a wider range of rewards – both primary rewards like juice and more complex rewards like visual experiences (McClure et al., 2007) – and will need within-participant comparisons to monetary stimuli. By investigating individual differences in resistance to immediate rewards, more generally, researchers may identify interactions between control-related regions and value-related regions that together shape intertemporal choice (Hare et al., 2009). And, research will need better links to the well-established literature on interval timing (Buhusi and Meck, 2005); for example, parallel manipulations of time perception could provide a bridge between discounting phenomena and the associated neural processes. Through such integrative approaches, new research will provide more satisfying answers to core decision neuroscience questions about differences in processing of temporally immediate and distant rewards.