• A B Brühl, M Rufer, T Kaffenberger, V Baur, and U Herwig.
• Department for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich, Lenggstrasse 31, CH 8032 Zürich, Switzerland. Electronic address: annette.bruehl@puk.zh.ch.
• Neuroscience. 2014 Apr 18;265:48-59.

AbstractSelf-worth is particularly influenced by self-appraisal, which is negatively biased in many psychiatric disorders. Positive and negative self-appraisals also shape current emotional states or even evoke defensive reactions, when they are incongruent with a subject's current state. Prior studies have mainly used externally given evaluative appraisals. In this study, 30 subjects used individual negative and positive self-appraisals during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We additionally investigated the effects of such self-appraisals onto the subsequent perception of photos of the individual subjects. Both self-appraisal conditions activated dorsomedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to the neutral condition. Positive self-appraisal evoked stronger activity than negative self-appraisal in the amygdala, ventral striatum and anterior cingulate cortex, whereas negative self-appraisal was associated with increased activity in the occipital regions. Positive self-appraisal had no effect on the perception of a photo of oneself, whereas negative appraisal increased activity in the anterior insula and parietal regions. Overall, positive self-appraisal activated more emotion-related brain regions, whereas negative self-appraisal had a relatively stronger influence on perception-related brain activity. These findings could on the one hand explain the effect of negative self-appraisal on the behavior in the real world and on the other hand support a stronger focus of psychotherapy on enhancing positive self-appraisals.Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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