The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-knowledge

Ochsner, Kevin N.; Beer, Jennifer S.; Robertson, Elaine R.; Cooper, Jeffrey C.; Gabrieli, John D. E.; Kihsltrom, John F.; D’Esposito, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.06.069

Cited by 525 publications

(412 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…For example, Ray et al (2005) noted that participants in their study were not constrained by task instructions during viewing of negative stimuli, and speculated that greater MedPFC activation in highly ruminative individuals could represent more self-reflective processing. Indeed, recent fMRI studies have observed greater MedPFC activity when participants were asked to attribute emotions to one's self Ochsner et al, 2005Ochsner et al, , 2004a. Similarly in our study, the task was very easy (determining the gender of a displayed face), and may have left participants with sufficient cognitive resources to engage in self-reflective processing, particularly when viewing sad faces.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Stop the sadness: Neuroticism is associated with sustained medial prefrontal cortex response to emotional facial expressions

2008

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Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative mood states, sensitivity to negative information, negative appraisal and vulnerability to psychopathology. Previous studies have associated the sustained processing of negative information (words) with individual differences such as rumination and depression but not with personality. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between neuroticism and changes in sustained patterns of activity within a brain region implicated in emotional self-evaluation and appraisal, the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MedPFC), when responding to emotional facial expressions (happy, fearful, and sad). We tested whether higher scores of neuroticism are associated with greater sustained patterns of brain activity in the MedPFC when responding to blocks of negative facial expressions. We found that higher scores of neuroticism were associated with greater sustained MedPFC activity throughout blocks of sad facial expressions, but not fearful or happy facial expressions. Based on the relationship between neuroticism and sensitivity to negative information, the current finding identifies a sustained temporal mechanism to this relationship.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Stop the sadness: Neuroticism is associated with sustained medial prefrontal cortex response to emotional facial expressions

2008

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“…Nevertheless, the puzzle remains as to why brain areas devoted to Theory of Mind should overlap with those used for selfattribution. In a closer vein to ours, Ochsner et al, [39] found a convergence of activation in the MPFC for the perception of a romantic partner.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

fMRI study of self vs. others' attributions of traits consistent with evolutionary understanding of the self

Munévar¹,

Cole²,

Ye³

et al. 2014

Neurosci Discov

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Background: An evolutionary explanation concerning neural substrates of the self requires the ability by the brain to coordinate new sensory information in light of the organisms' internal states and in the context of its personal history and genetic inheritance. The aim of the present study was to demonstrate the experimental feasibility of a conception of the self as a distributed system consistent with predictions derived from evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Methods: We used a 3T fMRI to compare Self vs. Other conditions in which 90 personality and 90 non-personality trait adjectives were rated as to whether they applied to Self, Best Friend, or Bill Gates, in a blocked-design paradigm. Results: When comparing Self vs. Best Friend, we found significant activation in the dorsal posterior cingulate (BA 31), an area where the brain distinguishes egocentric and allocentric orientation, as well as in the substantia nigra and caudate nucleus, which are areas that reward successful action in the basal ganglia. We found an overlap of activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (BA 24) between the Self vs. Bill Gates and Best Friend vs. Bill Gates although the activation was greater in the former, as should be expected within an evolutionary approach. Conclusions:The present study complements other neuroimaging studies of the self while resolving contradictions and paradoxes created by more traditional conceptions of the self.

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“…Within this network, some regions of interest (ROIs) are more active during tasks that involve general forms of social cognition, such as trait inference, or assessing the similarity of others to the self (dorsal/ventral-medial prefrontal cortex; DMPFC, VMPFC; Amodio & Frith, 2006;Decety & Cacioppo, 2012;Harris, Todorov, & Fiske, 2005; Jenkins & Mitchell, 2010;Ma, Vandekerckhove, Van Hoeck, & Van Overwalle, 2012;Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005;Ochsner et al, 2005;Schurz et al, 2014; Van Overwalle, 2009;Young & Saxe, 2009). Other ROIs are more active during tasks where participants represent mental states, such as beliefs or intentions (precuneus, and right/left temporoparietal junction; PC, RTPJ, LTPJ; Ciaramidaro et al, 2007;Dodell-Feder, Koster-Hale, Bedny, & Saxe, 2011; Fletcher et al, 1995; Gallagher et al, 2000; Gobbini, Koralek, Bryan, Montgomery, & 1 In the present study, "evaluate" refers to participants rating their agreement with a given claim.…”

Section: Metaethics and Mental State Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.

Theriault¹,

Waytz²,

Heiphetz³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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OVERLAP IN MORALS, FACTS, AND PREFERENCES 2Metaethical judgments refer to judgments about the information expressed by moral claims.Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are akin to facts, whereas moral subjectivists generally believe that moral claims are more akin to preferences. Evidence from developmental and social psychology has generally favored an objectivist view; however, this work has typically relied on few examples, and analyses have disallowed statistical generalizations beyond these few stimuli. The present work addresses whether morals are represented as fact-like or preference-like, using behavioral and neuroimaging methods, in combination with statistical techniques that can a) generalize beyond our sample stimuli, and b) test whether particular item features are associated with neural activity. Behaviorally, and contrary to prior work, morals were perceived as more preference-like than fact-like. Neurally, morals and preferences elicited common magnitudes and spatial patterns of activity, particularly within dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a critical region for social cognition. This common DMPFC activity for morals and preferences was present across whole-brain conjunctions, and in individually localized functional regions of interest (targeting the Theory of Mind network). By contrast, morals and facts did not elicit any neural activity in common.Follow-up item analyses suggested that the activity elicited in common by morals and preferences was explained by their shared tendency to evoke representations of mental states. We conclude that morals are represented as far more subjective than prior work has suggested. This conclusion is consistent with recent theoretical research, which has argued that morality is fundamentally about regulating social relationships.Keywords: metaethics, morality, social cognition, fMRI, theory of mind OVERLAP IN MORALS, FACTS, AND PREFERENCES 3Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.Moral claims (e.g. "eating meat is wrong") can be evaluated on multiple levels. One may agree or disagree with a given claim (a first-order judgment); however, independent of this, one may make a second-order (i.e. metaethical) judgment-regardless of whether you agree or disagree, what information does the claim express? Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are either true or false, and that this truthfulness is independent of anyone's personal beliefs (i.e. moral claims are akin to facts). By contrast, moral subjectivists believe that personal beliefs govern whether moral claims are true-or that moral claims cannot be true or false at all (i.e. moral claims are akin to preferences; Sayre-McCord, 1986; for review, see Goodwin & Darley, 2010). Metaethical questions are the subject of intense philosophical debate, yet they are highly relevant to cognitive, social, and moral psychology. Metaethical questions ask how moral information is represented. It is possible that morals are represented...

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The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-knowledge

Cited by 525 publications

References 75 publications

Stop the sadness: Neuroticism is associated with sustained medial prefrontal cortex response to emotional facial expressions

Stop the sadness: Neuroticism is associated with sustained medial prefrontal cortex response to emotional facial expressions

fMRI study of self vs. others' attributions of traits consistent with evolutionary understanding of the self

Examining overlap in behavioral and neural representations of morals, facts, and preferences.

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