Functional MRI reveals evidence of a self-positivity bias in the medial prefrontal cortex during the comprehension of social vignettes.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
; 14(6): 613-621, 2019 08 07.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31087068
ABSTRACT
A large literature in social neuroscience has associated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) with the processing of self-related information. However, only recently have social neuroscience studies begun to consider the large behavioral literature showing a strong self-positivity bias, and these studies have mostly focused on its correlates during self-related judgments and decision-making. We carried out a functional MRI (fMRI) study to ask whether the mPFC would show effects of the self-positivity bias in a paradigm that probed participants' self-concept without any requirement of explicit self-judgment. We presented social vignettes that were either self-relevant or non-self-relevant with a neutral, positive or negative outcome described in the second sentence. In previous work using event-related potentials, this paradigm has shown evidence of a self-positivity bias that influences early stages of semantically processing incoming stimuli. In the present fMRI study, we found evidence for this bias within the mPFC an interaction between self-relevance and valence, with only positive scenarios showing a self vs other effect within the mPFC. We suggest that the mPFC may play a role in maintaining a positively biased self-concept and discuss the implications of these findings for the social neuroscience of the self and the role of the mPFC.
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MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Autoimagem
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Percepção Social
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Córtex Pré-Frontal
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Compreensão
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Julgamento
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2019
Tipo de documento:
Article