Self-compassion is an important emotion regulation strategy predicting positive psychological health and fewer psychopathological problems, but little is known about its structural neural basis. In the current study, we investigated the neurostructural correlates of dispositional self-compassion and its components using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We found that self-compassion was inversely correlated with gray matter volume (GMV) in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which was primarily driven by the reduced self-judgment component. We also found that the mindfulness component was associated with greater GMV in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate cortex and the left supplementary motor area, while the isolation and the over-identification components were both correlated with greater GMV in the right inferior temporal gyrus, and over-identification additionally related to less GMV in visual areas. Our findings suggest that dispositional self-compassion and its components are associated with brain structure in regions involved in emotion regulation, self-referential and emotion processing, with implications for the cognitive and neural mechanisms of self-compassion as well as those underlying the effects of self-compassion on its health outcomes.

自我同情是一种重要的情绪调节策略，可以预测积极的心理健康和较少的精神病理学问题，但对其结构神经基础知之甚少。在目前的研究中，我们使用基于体素的形态测量学 (VBM) 研究了性格自我同情及其成分的神经结构相关性。我们发现自我同情与左背外侧前额叶皮层 (DLPFC) 的灰质体积 (GMV) 呈负相关，这主要是由减少的自我判断成分驱动的。我们还发现，正念成分与背内侧前额叶皮层/前扣带回皮层和左侧辅助运动区的 GMV 更大有关，而孤立和过度识别成分都与右侧颞下回较大的 GMV 相关，而过度识别还与视觉区域中较少的 GMV 相关。我们的研究结果表明，性格自我慈悲及其组成部分与情绪调节、自我参照和情绪处理相关区域的大脑结构有关，对自我慈悲的认知和神经机制以及潜在影响的机制有影响。对其健康结果的自我同情。