Modulation of cortical midline structures by implicit and explicit self-relevance evaluation.
Recent neuroimaging work has observed activity in cortical midline structures (CMS) such as medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices during self-referential processing. Moreover, items rated as self-relevant produce increased activity in these regions relative to items that are deemed not self-relevant. A common thread among previous reports has been reliance on experimental tasks that encourage or require online self-referential processing. In this paper, we report findings from two experiments that manipulated requirements for self-reflection. In Experiment 1, subjects rated trait adjectives for social desirability and for self-relevance. Results revealed increasing activity in CMS with increasing self-relevance, but only during explicit ratings of self-relevance. In Experiment 2, we examined CMS activity during passive viewing of personal semantic facts (such as subjects' own first names). Taken together, these results suggest that highly self-relevant information captures attention through neural mechanisms that are comparable to those engaged during explicit self-reflection, namely via recruitment of CMS structures.
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA. jmmoran@mit.edu
Joseph M
JM
Moran
Todd F
TF
Heatherton
William M
WM
Kelley
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012649:Self Concept; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen