Neural Population Decoding Reveals the Intrinsic Positivity of the Self.
People are motivated to hold favorable views of themselves, which manifests as a positivity bias when evaluating their own performance and abilities. However, it remains an open question whether positive affect is an essential component of people's self-concept. Prior functional neuroimaging research demonstrated that similar regions of the brain support positive affect and self-referential processing, although a direct test of their shared representation has yet to be examined. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging in conjunction with multivariate pattern analysis in a cross-domain neural population decoding paradigm. We found that a multivariate pattern classifier model trained to dissociate neural responses to viewing positively and negatively valenced images can dissociate thinking about oneself from a close friend during a lexical trait-judgment task commonly used in the study of self-referential processing. Cross-domain classification accuracy was found to be highest in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), a region previously implicated in both self-referential processing and positive affect. These results show that brain responses during self-referential processing can be decoded from multi-voxel activation patterns in the vMPFC when viewing positively valenced material, thereby providing evidence that positive affect may be a central component of the mental representation of the self.
The Ohio State University, Department of Psychology, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Robert S
RS
Chavez
Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Todd F
TF
Heatherton
The Ohio State University, Department of Psychology, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Dylan D
DD
Wagner
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D000067656:Optimism; D012649:Self Concept; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
functional magnetic resonance imaging; medial prefrontal cortex; multivariate pattern analysis; positive affect; self-representation
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