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. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e86430.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086430. eCollection 2014.

The self-liking brain: a VBM study on the structural substrate of self-esteem

Dmitrij Agroskin  1 , Johannes Klackl  1 , Eva Jonas  1
Affiliations

The self-liking brain: a VBM study on the structural substrate of self-esteem

Dmitrij Agroskin et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Abundant evidence suggests that self-esteem is an important personality resource for emotion regulation in response to stressful experiences. It was thus hypothesized that the relative grey matter volume of brain regions involved in responding to and coping with stress is related to individual differences in trait self-esteem. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging of 48 healthy adults in conjunction with voxel-based morphometry and diffeomorphic anatomical registration using exponentiated lie algebra (VBM-DARTEL), positive associations between self-esteem and regional grey matter volume were indeed found in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), right hippocampus, and left hypothalamus. In addition, self-esteem positively covaried with grey matter volume in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), which has been implicated in pride and theory of mind. The results suggest that persons with low self-esteem have reduced grey matter volume in brain regions that contribute to emotion/stress regulation, pride, and theory of mind. The findings provide novel neuroanatomical evidence for the view that self-esteem constitutes a vital coping resource.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Positive associations between regional grey matter volume and individual differences in trait self-esteem.
(A) anterior cingulate cortex, (B) lateral prefrontal cortex, (C) hypothalamus, (D) hippocampus (see also Table 1). Coordinates indicate the locations of the brain slices.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Positive association between grey matter volume in the right temporo-parietal junction and self-esteem.
The coordinate indicates the location of the brain slice (see also Table 1).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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