Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Jul 6;16(7):726-735. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsab053.
Relational self-esteem (RSE) refers to one's sense of self-worth based on the relationship with significant others, such as family and best friends. Although previous neuroimaging research has investigated the neural processes of RSE, it is less clear how RSE is represented in multivariable neural patterns. Being able to identify a stable RSE signature could contribute to knowledge about relational self-worth. Here, using multivariate pattern classification to differentiate RSE from personal self-esteem (PSE), which pertains to self-worth derived from personal attributes, we obtained a stable diagnostic signature of RSE relative to PSE. We found that multivariable neural activities in the superior/middle temporal gyrus, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, dorsal medial Prefrontal Cortex (dmPFC) and temporo-parietal junction were responsible for diagnosis of RSE, suggesting that the evaluation of RSE involves the retrieval of relational episodic memory, perspective-taking and value calculation. Further, these diagnostic neural signatures were able to sensitively decode neural activities related to RSE in another independent test sample, indicating the reliability of the brain state represented. By providing a reliable multivariate brain pattern for RSE relative to PSE, our results informed more cognitively prominent processing of RSE than that of PSE and enriched our knowledge about how relational self-worth is generated in the brain.
关系自尊（RSE）是指一个人基于与重要他人（如家人和最好的朋友）的关系而产生的自我价值感。尽管先前的神经影像学研究已经探讨了 RSE 的神经过程，但 RSE 如何在多变量神经模式中表现出来还不太清楚。能够识别出稳定的 RSE 特征可能有助于了解关系自我价值感。在这里，我们使用多元模式分类来区分 RSE 和个人自尊（PSE），后者源于个人属性的自我价值感，我们获得了 RSE 相对于 PSE 的稳定诊断特征。我们发现，上/中颞叶、顶内沟、后扣带皮层、背内侧前额叶皮层（dmPFC）和颞顶联合区的多变量神经活动负责 RSE 的诊断，表明 RSE 的评估涉及关系情景记忆的检索、换位思考和价值计算。此外，这些诊断性神经特征能够在另一个独立的测试样本中敏感地解码与 RSE 相关的神经活动，表明所代表的大脑状态的可靠性。通过提供 RSE 相对于 PSE 的可靠多元大脑模式，我们的结果表明 RSE 的认知处理比 PSE 更为突出，丰富了我们对大脑中如何产生关系自我价值感的认识。
