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Gratitude and the brain: Trait gratitude mediates the association between structural variations in the medial
Feng Kong1, Jingjing Zhao1, Xuqun You1
1School of Psychology.
Abstract:
Gratitude is a positive emotional trait, and plays a pivotal role in achieving a satisfactory quality of life. However, the neural basis of the relationship between trait gratitude and life satisfaction remains unknown. Here we examined the relationship between regional gray and white matter volume (rGMV/rWMV) in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and trait gratitude, and then explored how gratitude-related brain structures are related to life satisfaction in 136 young healthy adults. Voxel-based morphometry analyses found that trait gratitude was associated with smaller rGMV and rWMV in the MPFC implicated in social-cognitive processes, consistent with the behavioral findings reporting the social functions of gratitude. Importantly, structural variations in the MPFC related to trait gratitude also significantly predicted life satisfaction, and this association was fully mediated by trait gratitude. These results were still significant even after adjusting for the Big Five personality factors. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the common neuroanatomical substrates linking trait gratitude to life satisfaction and our results highlight that the MPFC is an important structure linking trait gratitude to life satisfaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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