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Remembering pleasure and personal meaning from episodes of intrinsic motivation : An fMRI study
Lee, Woogul Reeve, Johnmarshall
Lee, Woogul
Reeve, Johnmarshall
Author
Abstract
To decide whether or not to participate in an upcoming activity, people can use their memories of intrinsically-motivating or non-intrinsically-motivating experiences during previous participations. To understand the underlying neural mechanism of intrinsic motivation memories, we used a block-design functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to compare the neural activations during intrinsically-motivating memories versus during non-intrinsically-motivating memories. Results showed that both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were more activated during the recall of intrinsically-motivating memories rather than during the recall of non-intrinsically-motivating memories. Greater negative functional interactions between the VMPFC and ACC were also observed in the intrinsically-motivating situations. These findings suggest that the two complementary neural processes are employed to reconstruct intrinsically-motivating experiences: pleasure (reward related to VMPFC activity) and personal meaning (self-endorsement related to ACC activity).
Keywords
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), intrinsic motivation, selfdetermination theory (SDT), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)
Date
2020
Type
Journal article
Journal
Motivation and Emotion
Book
Volume
44
Issue
6
Page Range
810-818
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Positive Psychology and Education
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled