This article was originally published in a journal published by Elsevier and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author s benefit and for the benefit of the author s institution for non commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution sending it to specific colleagues that you know and providing a copy to your institution s administrator All other uses reproduction and distribution including without limitation commercial reprints selling or licensing copies or access or posting on open internet sites your personal or institution s website or repository are prohibited For exceptions permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier s permissions site at http www elsevier com locate permissionusematerial Update TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol 11 No 5 187 15 Clearfield M W and Mix K S 1999 Number versus contour length in infants discrimination of small visual sets Psychol Sci 10 408 411 16 Wynn K 1992 Addition and subtraction by human infants Nature 358 749 750 17 Wood J N and Spelke E S 2005 Infants enumeration of actions numerical discrimination and its signature limits Dev Sci 8 173 181 11 Feigenson L et al 2002 The representations underlying infants choice of more object files versus analog magnitudes Psychol Sci 13 150 156 12 Gao F et al 2000 What do infants know about continuous quantity J Exp Child Psychol 77 20 29 13 Huttenlocher J et al 2002 Infants and toddlers discriminate amount are they measuring Psychol Sci 13 244 249 14 Newcombe N et al 1999 Infants coding of location in continuous space Infant Behav Dev 22 483 510 py 1364 6613 see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved doi 10 1016 j tics 2007 01 006 co The default self feeling good or being right Jennifer S Beer University of California Davis 1 Shields Avenue Davis CA 95616 USA on al evaluations of the self because those evaluations draw on a particular cognitive process or because those evaluations involve emotional biases that paint the self in an unrealistically positive manner Medial prefrontal cortex a default mode of cognitive self evaluation Moran et al recently examined the neural underpinnings of cognitive and emotional processing in relation to the self by scanning participants while they used a four point scale from 1 not at all like me to 4 very much like me to rate themselves on a series of positive e g sincere and negative e g liar personality traits 6 There were three main findings First increases in medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate activity over time were related to increases in self description ratings Second response latencies were not associated with medial prefrontal cortex which suggests that this region does not simply index time spent on the task Third medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate activity were related to cognitive processing high versus low self description ratings whereas activity in the ventral anterior cingulate was related to emotional processing positive versus negative traits particularly for highly self descriptive traits Figure 1a These findings refine our understanding of medial prefrontal activity and self evaluation 1 4 This area is recruited for cognitive aspects of self evaluation such as judging the descriptiveness of personality traits and is not recruited for emotional aspects of self evaluation such as favoring positive information over negative information pe rs The medial prefrontal cortex exhibits a higher resting metabolic rate than many other brain regions This physiological default mode might support a psychological default state of chronic self evaluation that helps people consider their strengths and weaknesses when planning future actions However a recent imaging study that relates medial prefrontal cortex activity to self evaluation raises new questions about whether the psychological default mode of self evaluation is best characterized by accurate self evaluations or by feeling good about yourself Au th o r s Introduction Neural investigations of self suggest an intriguing relationship between the resting physiology and the psychological function of the medial prefrontal cortex 1 5 The medial prefrontal cortex has a higher level of baseline metabolism in comparison with many other brain regions 5 The baseline physiological difference in the medial prefrontal cortex has been theorized to reflect a baseline psychological characteristic of the mind when it is not otherwise engaged in a specific task The increased resting metabolism of the medial prefrontal cortex might support a generalized automatic evaluation of self 5 This default psychological mode promotes the consideration of one s strengths and weaknesses so that future actions can be planned in light of these qualities The association between self evaluation and medial prefrontal cortex has been supported primarily by studies that compare judgments about the self with judgments about other social objects or low level characteristics of stimuli e g a selfreference paradigm 1 4 In these studies self judgments e g descriptiveness of personality traits are associated with changes in medial prefrontal activity A recent fMRI study by Moran et al extends this research by investigating whether medial prefrontal cortex is associated with cognitive aspects or emotional aspects of self evaluation 6 In other words is medial prefrontal cortex recruited for Corresponding author Beer J S beer psy utexas edu Available online 7 March 2007 www sciencedirect com The psychological default mode of self evaluation The study by Moran et al 6 furthers our understanding of the default mode of self evaluation associated with medial prefrontal cortex but it also presents a puzzle Is the normative default mode of self evaluation characterized by accurate information gathering or by a biased search for flattering information As stated earlier the increased resting metabolism of the medial prefrontal cortex is theorized to support a default psychological mode of selfevaluation that provides chronic generalized updates on Update TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol 11 No 5 on al co py 188 pe rs Figure 1 Brain areas associated with self description and valence a i The medial prefrontal cortex MPFC and posterior cingulate cortex pCC were associated with high versus low self description judgments ii Ventral anterior cingulate cortex vACC is recruited for evaluating positive traits in comparison with negative traits
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