Increased and Coupled ERP and fMRI Responses toward Positive Social Evaluative Feedback: An EEG–fMRI Study

Abstract

Social-evaluative feedback is a key component of human social interaction, influencing self-view, behavior, and psychological well-being. This study investigates the neural mechanisms underlying social feedback processing in relation to self-view congruence. Participants ( N  = 54: 38 females, 15 males, 1 nonbinary) received putative evaluative feedback that was better, congruent, or worse than their self-view rating, previously presented. Brain responses were investigated using combined measurement of event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Both types of incongruence, better and worse, compared with congruent evaluative feedback, elicited increased activations in bilateral superior frontal regions. Comparing incongruent better to worse feedback revealed increased hemodynamic responses in the medial prefrontal cortex, the ventral striatum, and the precuneus (Pc). The late positive potential (LPP) component of the EEG showed larger amplitudes to incongruent than to congruent feedback and, similarly to the fMRI effect, larger amplitudes for better than worse feedback. Correlation of ERP and fMRI findings revealed significant relationships between the LPP and the striatum, as well as between the LPP and Pc, for better–worse differences. Thus, our findings suggest specific frontal activations associated with the evaluation of feedback incongruence, as well as additional frontal, posterior, and striatal valence-dependent activations representing reward-related processing and positively biased feedback integration. We propose that, after a first sweep of self-incongruence detection, selective neural responses to better feedback are driven by an evaluation of the subjective positivity of the feedback, opening the possibility of further elaboration on process feedback information integrated into the self.