Roles of Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Orbitofrontal Cortex in Self-evaluation

Abstract

Empirical investigations of the relation of frontal lobe function to self-evaluation have mostly examined the evaluation of abstract qualities in relation to self versus other people. The present research furthers our understanding of frontal lobe involvement in self-evaluation by examining two processes that have not been widely studied by neuroscientists: on-line self-evaluations and correction of systematic judgment errors that influence self-evaluation. Although people evaluate their abstract qualities, it is equally important that perform on-line evaluations to assess the success of their behavior in a particular situation. In addition, self-evaluations of task performance are sometimes overconfident because of systematic judgment errors. What role do the neural regions associated with abstract self-evaluations and decision bias play in on-line evaluation and self-evaluation bias? In this fMRI study, self-evaluation in two reasoning tasks was examined; one elicited overconfident self-evaluations of performance because of salient but misleading aspects of the task and the other was free from misleading aspects. Medial PFC (mPFC), a region associated with self-referential processing, was generally involved in on-line self-evaluations but not specific to accurate or overconfident evaluation. Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity, a region associated with accurate nonsocial judgment, negatively predicted individual differences in overconfidence and was negatively associated with confidence level for incorrect trials.

The ugly truth: negative gossip about celebrities and positive gossip about self entertain people in different ways

“…Therefore, our results supported the involvement of OPFC in self-enhancement bias: OPFC, rather than sMPFC, is specifically involved in processing positive gossip about self. The present result was also consistent with previous evidence that the OPFC was associated with overconfident selfbeliefs (i.e., positive self-evaluation) when people evaluated their performances in a reasoning task (Beer et al, 2010). Furthermore, OPFC was involved in both self-related tasks (e.g., Northoff et al, 2006) and representing pleasantness or reward value of stimuli (e.g., Rolls, 2004).…”

“…For example, during the self-evaluation task (judge whether the personality words describe participants themselves), TMS applied to the sMPFC selectively reduced selfenhancement for egoistic words, which described personalities related to talent or social prominency (e.g., ambitious, popular), but not for moralistic words which described personalities related to observance of social norms (e.g., considerate, moral) (Barrios et al, 2008). Besides, other studies suggested that the sMPFC was generally involved in self-evaluation, but not specific to positive self-evaluation (e.g., Beer, Lombardo, & Bhanji, 2010;Fossati et al, 2003;Moran et al, 2006). Gossip used in the present study included positive and negative social behaviors, which was closer to the moralistic than the egoistic evaluation.…”

Metacognitive confidence: A neuroscience approach

“…The primary cognitions about which people can make metacognitive certainty judgments range from knowledge of future outcomes to choices that have already been made. Consistent with Shimamura's (2000) proposal that secondary cognitions are processed by prefrontal areas, regions in the PFC were involved in many of the paradigms reviewed here, particularly medial prefrontal regions (Beer et al, 2009;De Martino et al, 2012;Eldaief et al, 2012;Huettel et al, 2005;Volz et al, 2003Volz et al, , 2004Volz et al, , 2005 and the OFC (Beer et al, 2009;Elliott et al, 1999;Hsu et al, 2005;Kepecs et al, 2008). Again, the medial prefrontal activations make sense in light of neuroscience research linking the MPFC to introspection and self-relevant processing, discussed above.…”

“…In a task where people had to reason through a forced choice problem (e.g., choosing which city in a presented pair they thought had a higher average temperature), greater confidence in choices was associated with deactivation in the MPFC, and greater degrees of overconfidence (i.e. confidence ratings that do not correspond with choice correctness) was negatively correlated with OFC activity (Beer, Lombardo, & Bhanji, 2009). Also, across a series of choices between food items that participants could later consume, the decisions about which people indicated greater choice confidence (i.e.…”

Memory, autonoetic consciousness, and the self

“…The functions in the spheres of EAM, autonoetic consciousness and self are, to a considerable degree, under the control of portions of the prefrontal cortex, in particular its ventromedial region (Beer, Lombardo, & Bhanji, 2010;Lee et al, 2010;Northoff et al, 2006;Passingham, Bengtsson, & Lau, 2010;Sebastian et al, 2008). However, functional imaging methods revealed that, in fact, the network is broader.…”