title: The precuneus and the insula in self-attributional processes.
abstract: Attributions are constantly assigned in everyday life. A well-known phenomenon is the self-serving bias: that is, people's tendency to attribute positive events to internal causes (themselves) and negative events to external causes (other persons/circumstances). Here, we investigated the neural correlates of the cognitive processes implicated in self-serving attributions using social situations that differed in their emotional saliences. We administered an attributional bias task during fMRI scanning in a large sample of healthy subjects (n = 71). Eighty sentences describing positive or negative social situations were presented, and subjects decided via buttonpress whether the situation had been caused by themselves or by the other person involved. Comparing positive with negative sentences revealed activations of the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Self-attribution correlated with activation of the posterior portion of the precuneus. However, self-attributed positive versus negative sentences showed activation of the anterior portion of the precuneus, and self-attributed negative versus positive sentences demonstrated activation of the bilateral insular cortex. All significant activations were reported with a statistical threshold of p ≤ .001, uncorrected. In addition, a comparison of our fMRI task with data from the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire, Revised German Version, demonstrated convergent validity. Our findings suggest that the precuneus and the PCC are involved in the evaluation of social events with particular regional specificities: The PCC is activated during emotional evaluation, the posterior precuneus during attributional evaluation, and the anterior precuneus during self-serving processes. Furthermore, we assume that insula activation is a correlate of awareness of personal agency in negative situations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps University of Marburg, Rudolf-Bultmann-Straße 8, 35039, Marburg, Germany. cabanis@med.uni-marburg.de
authors.forename: Maurice
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cabanis
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pyka
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mehl
authors.forename: Bernhard W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Loos-Jankowiak
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Winterer
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wölwer
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Musso
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Klingberg
authors.forename: Alexander M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Rapp
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Langohr
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wiedemann
authors.forename: Jutta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Herrlich
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Knut
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schnell
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vogeley
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kockler
authors.forename: Nadim J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.forename: Tony
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stöcker
authors.forename: Renate
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thienel
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pauly
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krug
authors.forename: Tilo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kircher
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen