Neurocognitive correlates of self-esteem: From self-related attentional bias to involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Despite growing interest in underlying cognitive mechanisms of self-esteem, its neurocognitive correlates are not fully-understood. Attention bias to self-related stimuli is an example of self-referential processing (SRP) and its association with self-esteem is not well-studied. Moreover, previous studies showed that the medial prefrontal regions are involved in SRP which might suggest its involvement in self-esteem too. We investigated attentional bias to self-related stimuli and its association with the level of self-esteem in the first study (N = 30). In the second study (N = 15), we modulated activity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), as one of the medial prefrontal regions, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to see how it affects different domains of self-esteem. Results showed that individuals with a higher level of self-esteem have more attentional bias to their own facial pictures (compared to other-facial pictures) and self-related words (compared to self-unrelated words) suggesting an impact of self-esteem on attentional and perceptual processes. Additionally, modulating activity of the VMPFC with 2 mA anodal and cathodal tDCS was associated with significantly higher ratings of global and total self-esteem but not other self-esteem domains. Our findings provide supporting evidence of neurocognitive correlates of self-esteem indicating a biasing influence of self-esteem on attention toward “self” and suggesting self-esteem as a function of SRP at behavioural and neural levels.