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If you're happy and you know it:Neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and well-being.

Danielle CosmeArian MobasserJennifer H Pfeifer
Published in: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience (2023)
Psychological health and well-being has important implications for individual and societal thriving. Research underscores the subjective nature of well-being, but how do individuals intuit this subjective sense of well-being in the moment? This preregistered study addresses this question by examining the neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and their dynamic relationship with trial-level evaluations. Participants (N = 105) completed a self-evaluation task and made judgments about three facets of psychological health and positive functioning-self-oriented well-being, social well-being, and ill-being. Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, self-evaluation elicited activity in the default mode network, and there was strong spatial overlap among constructs. Trial-level analyses assessed whether and how activity in a priori regions of interest-pgACC, vmPFC, and VS-were related to subjective evaluations. These regions explained additional variance in whether participants endorsed or rejected items but were differentially related to evaluations. Stronger activity in pgACC was associated with a higher probability of endorsement across constructs, whereas stronger activity in vmPFC was associated with a higher probability of endorsing ill-being items, but a lower probability of endorsing self-oriented and social well-being items. These results add nuance to neurocognitive accounts of self-evaluation and extend our understanding of the neurobiological basis of subjective psychological health and well-being.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • mental health
  • public health
  • sleep quality
  • health information
  • clinical trial
  • health promotion
  • study protocol
  • randomized controlled trial
  • depressive symptoms