Brain activation associated with pride and shame.
Neuropsychobiology
; 69(2): 95-106, 2014.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24577108
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Self-referential emotions such as shame/guilt and pride provide evaluative information about persons themselves. In addition to emotional aspects, social and self-referential processes play a role in self-referential emotions. Prior studies have rather focused on comparing self-referential and other-referential processes of one valence, triggered mostly by external stimuli. In the current study, we aimed at investigating the valence-specific neural correlates of shame/guilt and pride, evoked by the remembrance of a corresponding autobiographical event during functional magnetic resonance imaging.METHOD:
A total of 25 healthy volunteers were studied. The task comprised a negative (shame/guilt), a positive (pride) and a neutral condition (expecting the distractor). Each condition was initiated by a simple cue, followed by the remembrance and finished by a distracting picture.RESULTS:
Pride and shame/guilt conditions both activated typical emotion-processing circuits including the amygdala, insula and ventral striatum, as well as self-referential brain regions such as the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Comparing the two emotional conditions, emotion-processing circuits were more activated by pride than by shame, possibly due to either hedonic experiences or stronger involvement of the participants in positive self-referential emotions due to a self-positivity bias. However, the ventral striatum was similarly activated by pride and shame/guilt. In the whole-brain analysis, both self-referential emotion conditions activated medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate regions, corresponding to the self-referential aspect and the autobiographical evocation of the respective emotions.CONCLUSION:
Autobiographically evoked self-referential emotions activated basic emotional as well as self-referential circuits. Except for the ventral striatum, emotional circuits were more active with pride than with shame.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Self Concept
/
Shame
/
Brain
/
Emotions
Type of study:
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Language:
En
Journal:
Neuropsychobiology
Year:
2014
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Switzerland