The neural substrate of self- and other-concerned wellbeing: An fMRI study

PLoS One. 2019 Oct 1;14(10):e0203974. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203974. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Happiness, or Subjective Well-Being (SWB), is generally considered as a peaceful and satisfied state accompanied by consistent and optimistic mood. Due to its subjective and elusive nature, however, wellbeing has only been scarcely investigated in the neuroimaging literature. In this study, we investigated its neural substrates by characterizing two different perspectives: self- or other-concerned wellbeing. In the present study, 22 participants evaluated the subjective happiness (with button presses 1 to 4) to 3 categories (intra- and inter-personal and neutral) of pre-rated pictures in a slow event-related fMRI. Because wellbeing is constantly featured by pleasure feelings after self-inspection, we predict that happier conditions, featured by "intra-personal vs. neutral" and "inter-personal vs. neutral" conditions, should yield higher BOLD activities in overlapping reward- and self-related regions. Indeed, medial prefrontal (mPFC), pregenual ACC (pACC), precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) were revealed both by General Linear Model (GLM) (categorical contrasts) and parametric modulations (correlations with rating 1-4s), specifically, more connectivity between nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and mPFC, via additional psychophysiological interaction, or PPI, analyses. More interestingly, GLM and multivariate searchlight analyses jointly reveal the subdivision of mPFC and the PCC/precuneus, with anterior mPFC and dorsal PCC/precuneus more for interpersonal, posterior mPFC and ventral PCC/precuneus more for intrapersonal, SWB, respectively. Taken together, these results are not only consistent with the "cortical midline hypothesis of the self", but also extending the "spatial gradients of self-to-other-concerned processing" from mPFC to including both mPFC and PCC/precuneus, making them two "hubs" of self-to-other-concerned wellbeing network.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Female
  • Gyrus Cinguli* / diagnostic imaging
  • Gyrus Cinguli* / physiology
  • Happiness*
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging*
  • Male
  • Neural Pathways* / diagnostic imaging
  • Neural Pathways* / physiology
  • Psychophysiology

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Taiwan Ministry Of Science and Technology (MOST grant # 106-2410-H-006-036 to CCK, 107-2420-H-006-007 to HJ), and the NCKU “Top-Notch Grant” (D102-36A02). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.