title: Evaluative-feedback stimuli selectively activate the self-related brain area: an fMRI study.
abstract: Evaluative-feedback, occurring in our daily life, generally contains subjective appraisal of one's specific abilities and personality characteristics besides objective right-or-wrong information. Traditional psychological researches have proved it to be important in building up one's self-concept; however, the neural basis underlying its cognitive processing remains unclear. The present neuroimaging study revealed the mechanism of evaluative-feedback processing at the neural level. 19 healthy Chinese subjects participated in this experiment, and completed the time-estimation task to better their performance according to four types of feedback, namely positive evaluative- and performance-feedback as well as negative evaluative- and performance-feedback. Neuroimaging findings showed that evaluative- rather than performance-feedback can induce increased activities mainly distributed in the cortical midline structures (CMS), including medial prefrontal cortex (BA 8/9)/anterior cigulate cortex (ACC, BA 20), precuneus (BA 7/31) adjacent to posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC, BA 23) of both hemispheres, as well as right inferior lobule (BA 40). This phenomenon can provide evidence that evaluative-feedback may significantly elicit the self-related processing in our brain. In addition, our results also revealed that more brain areas, particularly some self-related neural substrates were activated by the positive evaluative-feedback, in comparative with the negative one. In sum, this study suggested that evaluative-feedback was closely correlated with the self-concept processing, which distinguished it from the performance-feedback.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, No. 3663 of North Zhongshan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai 200062, China. xhpan@psy.ecnu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Xiaohong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Jianqi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult