Abstract
BackgroundThe attribution of personal relevance, i.e. relating internal and external stimuli to establish a sense of belonging, is a common phenomenon in daily life. Although previous research demonstrated a relationship between reward and personal relevance, their exact neuronal relationship including the impact of personality traits remains unclear.Methodology/Principal FindingsUsing functional magnetic resonance imaging, we applied an experimental paradigm that allowed us to explore the neural response evoked by reward and the attribution of personal relevance separately. We observed different brain regions previously reported to be active during reward and personal relevance, including the bilateral caudate nucleus and the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC). Additional analysis revealed activations in the right and left insula specific for the attribution of personal relevance. Furthermore, our results demonstrate a negative correlation between signal changes in both the PACC and the left anterior insula during the attribution of low personal relevance and the personality dimension novelty seeking.Conclusion/SignificanceWhile a set of subcortical and cortical regions including the PACC is commonly involved in reward and personal relevance, other regions like the bilateral anterior insula were recruited specifically during personal relevance. Based on our correlation between novelty seeking and signal changes in both regions during personal relevance, we assume that the neuronal response to personally relevant stimuli is dependent on the personality trait novelty seeking.
Highlights
Various imaging studies tried to clarify and to uncover the neuronal basis of our self, indicating an increased interest in this mysterious topic
Relying on recent literature we focused our interest on the bilateral anterior insula [5] and the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex [5]
We analysed the relationship between personal relevance and novelty seeking using repeated measurements analysis of variance (ANOVA)
Summary
Various imaging studies tried to clarify and to uncover the neuronal basis of our self, indicating an increased interest in this mysterious topic. In this context, a variety of different aspects and concepts of the self were investigated by neuroscientists, for instance self-recognition [1,2], self-other discrimination [3,4], selfreflection [5] and self-relatedness [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] or reward-based self-relatedness [14,15] and the attribution of personal relevance. Previous research demonstrated a relationship between reward and personal relevance, their exact neuronal relationship including the impact of personality traits remains unclear
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