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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on July 25, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn127
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© 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


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