The involvement of the posterior parietal cortex in promotion and prevention focus

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Motivation plays a critical role in human cognitive function, while acting as a driving force for the necessary behavior to achieve a desired goal and success (i.e., achievement motivation). Based on the theoretical background of achievement motivation, this study designed an incentive delay task with four motivational orientations (i.e., promotion, prevention, mastery/self, and performance/other). To investigate whether people would have their behavioral patterns toward achievement motivation orientation, we applied an unsupervised clustering algorithm to classify individuals’ behavioral responses acquired from the task by categorizing certain behavioral similarities. As a result, this hierarchical clustering approach classified subjects into two distinctive subgroups: Group#1 (i.e., the pro/pre group, n = 52) and Group#2 (i.e., the self/other group, n = 48). Based on clustering, Group#1 showed significantly better performance with promotion/prevention orientations, whereas Group#2 exhibited significantly higher performance with self/other orientations. Structural brain analyses discovered increased gray matter volume and sulcal depth in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in the pro/pre group compared to the self/other group. With resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data, we found higher local brain fluctuations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in the self/other group compared to the pro/pre group. Furthermore, mPFC seed-based functional connectivity showed significantly increased functional coupling with the posterior cingulate cortex in the self/other group relative to the pro/pre group. Taken together, these results shed light on structural and functional neural mechanisms related to achievement motivation and, furthermore, provide novel insights regarding PPC’s role in motivational processing toward promotion- and prevention-focused orientation.