To decide whether or not to participate in an upcoming activity, people can use their memories of intrinsically-motivating or non-intrinsically-motivating experiences during previous participations. To understand the underlying neural mechanism of intrinsic motivation memories, we used a block-design functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to compare the neural activations during intrinsically-motivating memories versus during non-intrinsically-motivating memories. Results showed that both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were more activated during the recall of intrinsically-motivating memories rather than during the recall of non-intrinsically-motivating memories. Greater negative functional interactions between the VMPFC and ACC were also observed in the intrinsically-motivating situations. These findings suggest that the two complementary neural processes are employed to reconstruct intrinsically-motivating experiences: pleasure (reward related to VMPFC activity) and personal meaning (self-endorsement related to ACC activity).

中文翻译：

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从内在动机的事件中记住快乐和个人意义：一项功能磁共振成像研究

为了决定是否参加即将举行的活动，人们可以使用以前参与过程中对内在动机或非内在动机的记忆。为了了解内在动机记忆的潜在神经机制，我们使用了一个块设计功能磁共振成像（fMRI）实验来比较内在动机记忆与非内在动机记忆之间的神经激活。结果表明，腹侧前额叶皮层（VMPFC）和前扣带回皮层（ACC）在内在动机记忆的回忆中而不是在非内在动机记忆的回忆中都被激活。在具有内在动力的情况下，还观察到了VMPFC和ACC之间更大的负面功能相互作用。这些发现表明，两个互补的神经过程被用来重构内在动机的体验：愉悦（与VMPFC活动有关的奖励）和个人意义（与ACC活动有关的自我认可）。