Skip Navigation



Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on July 25, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn127
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
19/4/797    most recent
bhn127v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bengtsson, S. L.
Right arrow Articles by Passingham, R. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bengtsson, S. L.
Right arrow Articles by Passingham, R. E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Motivation to do Well Enhances Responses to Errors and Self-Monitoring

Sara L. Bengtsson1, Hakwan C. Lau1,2 and Richard E. Passingham1,2

1 Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, London, UK, 2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Address correspondence to Dr. Sara Bengtsson, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. Email: S.Bengtsson{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk.

Humans are unique in being able to reflect on their own performance. For example, we are more motivated to do well on a task when we are told that our abilities are being evaluated. We set out to study the effect of self-motivation on a working memory task. By telling one group of participants that we were assessing their cognitive abilities, and another group that we were simply optimizing task parameters, we managed to enhance the motivation to do well in the first group. We matched the performance between the groups. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, the motivated group showed enhanced activity when making errors. This activity was extensive, including the anterior paracingulate cortex, lateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. These areas showed enhanced interaction with each other. The anterior paracingulate activity correlated with self-image ratings, and overlapped with activity when participants explicitly reflected upon their performance. We suggest that the motivation to do well leads to treating errors as being in conflict with one's ideals for oneself.

Key Words: conflict monitoring • error monitoring • fMRI • paracingulate cortex • self-reflection • working memory


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.