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Anatomy and Psychological needs 1

Running Head: ANATOMY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS

Brain Gray Matter Correlates of General Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration:

A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

Woogul Lee

Korea National University of Education

and

Johnmarshall Reeve

Korea University

Authors’ Note: Correspondence should be addressed to Woogul Lee, Department of Education,

Korea National University of Education, Cheongju-si, Chungbuk 28173, Korea, E-mail:

[email protected], Tel: +82-43-230-3614, Fax: +82-43-231-7193 and Johnmarshall

Reeve, Department of Education, Brain and Motivation Research Institute, Korea

University, Seoul 02841, Korea, E-mail: [email protected], Tel: +82-2-3290-2295, Fax:

+82-2-3290-2929. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic

of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A5B6036594).


Abstract

Basic psychological needs lie at the heart of the self-determination theory (SDT) explanatory

framework. SDT researchers have recently undertaken neuroscientific programs of research to

investigate the neural bases of psychological need satisfaction, and they have done so by using

functional neuroimaging data collection methods. According to these studies, anterior insula

activity, striatum activity, and their functional interactions represent central neural mechanisms

of psychological need satisfaction. These findings led us to now investigate the possibility that

people might possess individual differences in the capacity to experience need satisfaction and

need frustration and that these individual differences would be based on differences in their

structural brain volumes in their insula and striatum. Whole-brain regression analyses of 50

participants’ anatomic MRI scans to predict their self-reported need satisfaction and need

frustration over the last year found that striatum gray matter volume, but not insula gray matter

volume, correlated positively with extent of psychological need satisfaction. In addition, the

brain gray matter correlates of general psychological need frustration were distinct from those of

general psychological need satisfaction. These neuroanatomic findings offer unique insights to

understand the neuroanatomic bases of psychological need satisfaction and frustration.

Keywords: striatum, psychological need satisfaction, psychological need frustration, self-

determination theory, voxel-based morphometry.

Brain Gray Matter Correlates of General Psychological Need Satisfaction and

Frustration: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study


Self-determination theory (SDT) is an organismic theory of motivation and personality to

explain human flourishing (Ryan & Deci, 2017; Vansteenkiste, Niemiec, & Soenens, 2010).

According to SDT, people have inherent and spontaneous propensities that, when supported by

environmental conditions, enable adaptive functioning, development, and wellness. In particular,

the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness lie at the heart of the

SDT explanatory framework. Though all people have the same set of basic psychological needs

irrespective of their age, gender, culture, and other demographics, SDT acknowledges that the

capacity to experience psychological need satisfaction and autonomous motivation more

generally may arise as an individual difference characteristic that stems from some people

having a developmental history of being exposed to need-satisfying and autonomy-supportive

relationships and environments while other people have a developmental history of being

exposed to need-frustrating and interpersonally-controlling relationships and environments (Deci

& Ryan, 1985; Prentice, Halusic, & Sheldon, 2014; Reeve, Jang, & Jang, 2018). If so, then

people may develop differential capacities to experience psychological need satisfaction and

frustration to different degrees even though they encounter the same environmental conditions.

Psychological need satisfaction has traditionally been investigated as a psychologically-

experienced phenomenon that reflects subjective experience that can be reported in a reliable

way on a self-report questionnaire (Chen et al., 2015). Recently, SDT researchers have

undertaken neuroscientific programs of research to discover the neural bases of the psychological

need subjective experience that can be measured objectively using neuroimaging methodologies,

such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI; Lee & Reeve, 2013, 2017; Marsden,

Ma, Deci, Ryan, & Chiu, 2015; Murayama, Matsumoto, Izuma, & Matsumoto, 2010) and


electroencephalogram (EEG; Di Domenico, Le, Liu, Ayza, & Fournier, 2016; Legault & Inzlicht,

2013; Zougkou, Weinstein, & Paulmann, 2017). These researchers have conducted a number of

neuroimaging studies to identify the functional activations of the brain areas associated with the

moment-to-moment experience of psychological need satisfaction, though similar functional

neuroimaging studies of psychological need frustration are currently non-existent, at least within

the SDT literature. Primarily, the functional activations of the insula, a key brain area for self-

related processing (Craig, 2009; Modinos, Ormel, & Aleman, 2009), and those of the striatum, a

key brain area for hedonic responses to pleasurable situations (Cardinal, Parkinson, Hall, &

Everitt, 2002; Robbins & Everitt, 1996), have consistently been observed (Lee & Reeve, 2017;

Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014). These findings suggest that insula activity, striatum activity, and

their functional interactions appear to be central in the neural processes of basic psychological

needs (Lee, 2016; Reeve & Lee, in press).

The insula (insular cortex) is a portion of the cerebral cortex that is located at the

anatomical intersection of the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. The insula is divided into two

parts—the larger anterior insular and the somewhat smaller posterior insula. The posterior insula

(which is more aligned with the subcortical brain) receives, monitors, and becomes aware of

changes in interoceptive (visceral, homeostatic) body states and relays this information to the

anterior insula (which is more aligned with the cortical brain) to construct a consciously-awared

representation of how one feels (Craig, 2002, 2009; Wicker et al., 2003). In the anterior insula,

people consolidate this “gut-felt” feeling-state information with social-contextual information

about the task they are involved in and the people around them to form a basis of the conscious

experience (subjective awareness) of “How I feel” (Craig, 2002, 2009).


The striatum is the largest structure within the subcortical basal ganglia (Liljeholm &

O’Doherty, 2012). The striatum is divided into a ventral (lower) division and a dorsal (upper)

division. The ventral striatum consists mainly of the nucleus accumbens (but also the ventral

parts of the caudate nucleus and the putamen), while the dorsal striatum consists of the caudate

nucleus and the putamen. The ventral striatum, and the nucleus accumbens in particular, plays a

key role in pleasure, satisfaction, reward, and reinforcement, including “the hedonic valuation of

stimuli”. Through the information they receive from the activation of the ventral striatum

(nucleus accumbens), people learn what to like, what to prefer, and what to want (Smith, Tindell,

Aldridge, & Berridge, 2009). The dorsal striatum is a component of the brain’s reward circuitry,

and it is different from the ventral striatum in that it is heavily interconnected with the prefrontal

cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the motor cortex and therefore allows reward information to

regulate decision-making, self-control (e.g., delay of immediate gratification), and goal-directed

action, respectively.

Insula—striatum interactions also exist. The insula and striatum have both structural and

functional connections (Chikama, McFarland, Amaral, & Haber, 1997; Cho et al., 2013). This

means that the insula and striatum can work together, rather than provide independent inputs and

outputs. Specifically insula—striatum connectivity allows for the integration of bodily-based

information with reward-related information during the processing of subjective feelings (Craig,

2009), including the self-reported experience of high vs. low intrinsic motivation during task

performance (Lee & Reeve, 2017).

To date, what these neuroscientific programs of research have shown is that functional

activations in the aforementioned areas—anterior insula and striatum—occur when people are

exposed to environmental conditions such as a provision of choice (Leotti & Delgado, 2011,


2014; Murayama et al., 2015) and optimal challenge (Lee & Reeve, 2017). So, environmental

conditions are important antecedents to psychological need satisfaction. For instance, when

participants were exposed for 7 seconds to competence-enabling and optimally-challenging

anagrams and given a helpful hint 3 seconds into the anagram solving (e.g., trial #1: O H T M N

= M O _ _ _; trail #2: N R I T A = T R _ _ _) vs. when they were exposed to non-competence-

enabling and challengeless anagrams and given the same helpful hints (e.g., trial #3: C L C O K

= C L _ _ _; trial #4: I F R S T = F I _ _ _), they reported subjective experiences of optimal

challenge and competence need satisfaction and their fMRI scans showed anterior insula

activations, striatum activations, and anterior insula-striatum interactions.

Some functional neuroimaging studies have examined individual differences in

participants’ perceptions of psychological need satisfaction (Di Domenico, Fournier, Ayaz, &

Ruocco, 2013; Di Domenico et al., 2016) or autonomous motivation (Legault & Inzlicht, 2013),

but these studies have not examined the neural processes directly associated with psychological

need satisfaction itself. Furthermore, there has been no study directly investigating the possibility

that differences in brain structure underlie possible differences in the capacity to experience

psychological need satisfaction or psychological need frustration in their daily lives.

By brain structure, we mean the gray matter volume of particular brain structures. The

gray matter volume of a specific brain structure is calculated from an analysis of MRI scans that

provide snapshots of both the volume of a particular brain structure and the volume of the brain

as a whole. People’s brain sizes vary, so the person’s overall brain size is treated as a covariate in

determining the gray matter volume of any one brain structure. The volume of a brain structure is

mostly a function of genetics and maturation, but it is also affected by variations in

environmental conditions. For instance, maternal sensitivity (i.e., how timely and accurate a


mother’s responsiveness is to the infant’s distress signals) significantly affects limbic structure

(e.g., hippocampus, amygdala) volumes (Rifkin-Graboi et al., 2015). Given such findings, the

logic that led to the present investigation was that, because (1) we know the neural bases of

psychological need satisfaction (but not psychological need frustration), (2) chronic

environmental conditions affect the structural volumes of subcortical brain areas, and (3)

individual differences in these structural brain volumes emerged and affect experience and

behavior, we investigated the possibility that people might possess individual differences in the

capacity to experience psychological need satisfaction and psychological need frustration and

that these individual differences would be based on differences in their structural gray matter

volumes in their insula and striatum.

In the present study, we sought to identify anatomic correlates of psychological need

satisfaction and frustration. As the variations in gray matter volumes of brain areas reflect extent

of experience-dependent neuroanatomic adaptation (Zatorre, Fields, & Johansen-Berg, 2012), we

particularly examined which brain areas’ gray matter volumes were associated with extent of

general psychological need satisfaction and frustration respectively. Considering the neural

findings from the functional neuroimaging studies about psychological need satisfaction, we can

hypothesize that the brain areas related to self-related processing (i.e., insula) and related to

pleasure-related processing (i.e., striatum) show anatomic relationships with the degree of

psychological need satisfaction. That is, the anatomic differences in people’s insula and striatum

gray matter volumes would predict people’s general experiences of psychological need

satisfaction in their daily lives. Suggestive support for this hypothesis can also be seen by the

neuroanatomic findings of a positive relationship between people’s insula gray matter volumes

and their general psychological well-being (Lewis, Kanai, Rees, & Bates, 2014) and of a positive


relationship between people’s striatum gray matter volumes and their hedonic strength in

response to pleasurable situations (Carlson, Foti, Harmon-Jones, & Proudfit, 2015). We could

not, however, set a priori hypotheses about the brain gray matter correlates of general

psychological need frustration because the functional neuroimaging studies about psychological

need frustration are relatively sparse and because the neural findings from these studies are

somewhat inconsistent. So, our investigation of the brain gray matter correlates of the general

perception of psychological need frustration was exploratory.

Method

Participants

Fifty Korean undergraduates (25 females and 25 males; mean age 23.1 ± 2.72 years),

recruited from a large private university in Seoul, Korea, participated in this voxel-based

morphometry study that uses a magnetic resonance imaging methodology. All participants were

right-handed and had no history of neurological illness. The participants provided informed

consent and received compensation for their participation. This study was approved by the

institutional review board of Korea University.

Measure

General Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration. To assess the degree of

generally experienced psychological need satisfaction and frustration in each participant’s life,

participants responded to 12 items assessing the satisfaction and frustration dimensions of the

psychological needs for autonomy and competence. We adopted these items from the Balanced

Measure of Psychological Needs scale (BMPN; Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012), a previously-validated

and widely-used measure in SDT literature (Sheldon & Schüler, 2011; Young, Kashdan, &

Macatee, 2015). Sample items, using the stem “During the last year...”, are “I have been free to


do things my own way” and “I have been doing what really interests me” (autonomy

satisfaction), “I have been doing things against my will” and “I have had a lot of pressure on me

that I could do without” (autonomy frustration), “I have taken on and mastered hard challenges”

and “I have been successful in completing difficult tasks and projects” (competence satisfaction),

and “I have been struggling to do things I should be good at” and “I have been doing things that

made me feel incompetent” (competence frustration). The BMPN also includes scales to assess

relatedness satisfaction and relatedness frustration, but we did not include these scales in the data

collection because we focused only on the two psychological needs most directly related to

intrinsically motivated processes. To complete our measure, participants responded on a 1

(Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree) scale. To translate the validated measure originally

written in English into Korean, we followed the guidelines of Brislin (1980). Two graduate

students who were fluent in both languages first carried out separate back-translations. Then, a

consensus translation was reached after any discrepancies that emerged between the translators

were discussed and eliminated. The BMPN showed acceptable reliability in the present study (6-

item = .75 for psychological need satisfaction; 6-item = .63 for psychological need

frustration).

MRI Data Acquisition

A 3T Trio MRI scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) was used for anatomic imaging.

High-resolution T1-weighted anatomic images were acquired by using a MP-RAGE sequence

with the following parameters: TR = 1900 ms, TE = 2.52 ms, flip angle = 9°, field of view = 256

x 256, in-plane resolution = 1 x 1 mm, and slice thickness = 1 mm with no gap.

Imaging Data Analysis


Voxel-Based Morphometry. The imaging data were analyzed by using the

Computational Anatomy Toolbox (CAT12; http://www.neuro.uni-jena.de/cat/) implemented in

the Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM 12; http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/software/spm12/)

software. Each participant’s brain volume was normalized to the Montreal Neurological Institute

(MNI) template and segmented into gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid for

separately examining the gray matter volume. After the quality of the normalization and

segmentation was checked, the gray matter volume was spatially smoothed with an 8-mm full-

width at half-maximum (FWHM) Gaussian kernel.

As a group-level analysis, a whole-brain regression analysis was conducted to identify

the brain gray matter correlates of psychological need satisfaction (i.e., autonomy and

competence satisfaction) and of psychological need frustration (i.e., autonomy and competence

frustration). In this analysis, each participant’s total intracranial volume, gender, and age were

considered as covariates. For correcting multiple comparison inferences in this whole-brain

analysis, the cluster-wise threshold (corrected p < .05) was employed, considering both the

voxel-wise threshold (p < .001) and cluster size (n > 71, the minimum volume of 568 mm3). This

was determined based on the Monte Carlo simulation method (Forman et al., 1995) using the

Analysis of Functional NeuroImages (AFNI; Cox, 1996; http://afni.nimh.nih.gov) software.

Results

We conducted whole-brain regression analyses to identify the brain gray matter correlates

of general psychological need satisfaction (i.e., autonomy and competence satisfaction) and

general psychological need frustration (i.e., autonomy and competence frustration) controlling

for the effects of each participant’s total intracranial volume, gender, and age. The results of the

regression analyses appear in Table 1.


In the regressions to predict general psychological need satisfaction, there was a positive

and statistically significant relation between the gray matter volume of the left striatum (Figure

1) and participants’ general psychological need satisfactions (p < .001 with at least 71 contiguous

voxels; corrected p < .05). The gray matter volume of the insula did not show any significant

relations with the degree of participants’ general psychological need satisfactions.

In the regressions to predict general psychological need frustration, neither the gray

matter volume of the insula nor the striatum was associated with participants’ general

psychological need frustration scores. Instead, the gray matter volumes of the left lingual gyrus

(in the occipital lobe) and the right inferior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with the

degree of participants’ general psychological need frustrations, while the gray matter volumes of

the left postcentral gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus were negatively correlated with

the degree of participants’ general psychological need frustrations (p < .001 with at least 71

contiguous voxels; corrected p < .05).

Discussion

The developing structure of each person’s brain reflects, in part, his or her unique

personal history (Cicchetti, 2002). Depending on the person’s recurring exposures to

environmental opportunities and sources of support vs. restrictions and sources of abuse and

neglect that can affect brain development [e.g., cortisol (hormonal) episodes in response to

environmental support vs. stress; Reeve & Tseng, 2011], the brain can change its structure, such

as by forming new synapses, modifying existing synapses, growing more synapses per neuron,

extending the lengths of dendrites, and growing dendritic spine density. It is now clear that

environmental experiences of support-enrichment and of deprivation-frustration (e.g., parenting

practices) influence brain development (Belsky & de Haan, 2011; Rifkin-Graboi et al., 2015;


Sethna et al., 2017). So, in the present study, we investigated the possibility that existing

differences in people’s gray matter volumes in the insula and in the striatum might affect their

capacity to experience greater or lesser psychological need satisfaction and frustration.

We found an anatomic association between the striatum and general psychological need

satisfaction. After controlling the effects of total brain volume, gender, and age, participants

showed greater general psychological need satisfaction in proportion to which they had greater

gray matter volumes of the striatum. The striatum is a well-known brain area for physiological

need satisfaction (Cardinal et al., 2002; Robbins & Everitt, 1996). In neuroscience, the hedonic

experiences based on physiological need satisfaction (e.g., a cup of water for a thirsty person)

can be explained by dopamine (a pleasure-related neurotransmitter) increases in the striatum

(Reeve & Lee, 2012). Recent neuroimaging studies have consistently found that the functional

activity of the striatum is crucial not only for physiological need satisfaction but also for

psychological need satisfaction. That is, striatum activity has been observed when participants

had personal choices and subsequently experienced autonomy need satisfaction (Leotti &

Delgado, 2011, 2014) and when participants successfully performed optimally challenging tasks

and subsequently experienced competence need satisfaction (Lee & Reeve, 2017; Murayama et

al., 2010).

The aforementioned neuroimaging findings suggest that intra-individual functional

differences in striatum activity are positively associated with extent of people’s moment-to-

moment psychological need satisfaction. That is, some social contexts (e.g., optimally

challenging tasks) support people’s psychological need satisfactions while other social contexts

(e.g., harsh interpersonal control) thwart people’s psychological need satisfactions. In the present

study, we can additionally suggest that inter-individual anatomic differences in the striatum are


positively associated with extent of individuals’ general psychological need satisfaction. That is,

extent of striatum gray matter volumes can be different across individuals due to their different

developmental experiences, and these anatomic differences can influence extent of their

psychological need satisfactions in their daily lives. This is consistent with previous findings

demonstrating anatomic associations between the striatum and general hedonic strength in the

case of other human need satisfactions (Carlson et al., 2015; Janes, Park, Farmer, & Chakravarty,

2015; Zacharopoulos et al., 2016). For example, Carlson and colleagues (2015) found that

participants’ greater striatum gray matter volumes predicted greater hedonic reactions to the

same amounts of rewards.

Inconsistent with our hypothesis, we could not find any meaningful anatomic associations

between insula and general psychological need satisfaction. That is, participants’ general

perceptions of psychological need satisfactions in their daily lives were not significantly

correlated with extent of the gray matter volumes of the insula. The insula plays crucial roles for

self-related processes such as self-reflection and self-integration (Craig, 2009; Enzi, de Greck,

Prosch, Tempelmann, & Northoff, 2009; Naqvi & Bechara, 2009; Modinos et al., 2009). Insula

activity generates subjective feelings through monitoring, reflecting upon, and integrating self-

related information (e.g., bodily information, information of one’s own perceptions). Because of

this self-related nature, the insula has received attention as a key brain area for the pursuit and

satisfaction of basic psychological needs. This idea has been supported by the functional

neuroimaging results about psychological need satisfaction (Lee & Reeve, 2013, 2017; Leotti &

Delgado, 2011, 2014). As well as striatum activity, insula activity has been observed when

participants experienced autonomy and competence need satisfaction.


The insula does show intra-individual functional differences depending on the degree of

psychological need satisfaction. But, in the present study, we found that the insula does not show

any inter-individual anatomic differences in terms of general psychological need satisfaction.

The insula and striatum contribute to the moment-to-moment experience of psychological need

satisfaction in different ways (Lee & Reeve, 2017; Leotti & Delgado, 2011, 2014). In a recent

neuroimaging study (Reeve & Lee, in preparation), we exposed participants to different versions

of a learning task and recorded their experience of autonomy associated with the beginning of

each new trial. Extent of early-trial autonomy was associated with anterior insula activations (but

not with striatum activations). These early-trial anterior insula activations were then associated

with late-trial striatum activations on those occasions that participants experienced late-trial

satisfactions from their task participation. This means that the neural processes of psychological

need satisfaction could be parsed into two parts: early-stage anterior insula activity reflecting the

pursuit or anticipation of basic psychological needs and late-stage striatum activity reflecting the

actual satisfaction experience of these basic psychological needs. Connecting these functional

and anatomic results, people seem to show minimal levels of individual differences in the pursuit

or anticipation of basic psychological needs, but they seem to show significant levels of

individual differences in the satisfaction of basic psychological needs.

Another way of understanding the process of psychological need satisfaction is to

acknowledge that it features both eudaimonic and hedonic aspects. So, individual’s pursuit of

basic psychological need satisfaction is initiated based on her or his self-determination of

whether the situations are personally meaningful and hence worth doing (i.e., eudaimonia), and

then she or he experiences pleasure (i.e., hedonia) when her or his basic psychological needs are

actually satisfied. Considering these theoretical postulates of SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 240),


the results are understandable that, among the neural system of psychological need satisfaction,

only extent of striatum gray matter volumes reflecting individual differences in hedonic reactions

was associated with extent of general psychological need satisfaction while extent of insula gray

matter volumes reflecting individual differences in self-determined eudaimonic evaluation was

not.

The null effect finding between psychological need satisfaction and insula volume seems

inconsistent with previous neuroanatomic findings investigating psychological concepts similar

to psychological need satisfaction. Lewis and colleagues (2014) found that people’s insula gray

matter volumes positively predicted the degree of psychological well-being, a well-known

consequence of psychological need satisfaction (Ryan & Deci, 2001). One possible explanation

about these inconsistent results is that participants’ individual differences in self-reflection and

self-integration could be more influential as Lewis and colleagues considered broader aspects of

psychological need satisfaction including more abstract and eudaimonic aspects (e.g., purpose in

life). We invite future research to explain about this issue more thoroughly.

We also found that the gray matter volumes of some temporal, parietal, and occipital

brain areas positively and negatively correlated with general psychological need frustration. As

these results were not what we had hypothesized, we could not interpret these results

conclusively. However, we can clearly see that the brain gray matter correlates of general

psychological need frustration were different from the brain gray matter correlates of general

psychological need satisfaction. This finding suggests that the neuroanatomic systems of

psychological need satisfaction and frustration do not overlap but are instead distinct in terms of

gray matter volume differences. Some SDT researchers recently proposed the “dual-process

model” suggesting that psychological need satisfaction and psychological need frustration can be


independent and separable psychological experiences (Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, &

Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011). Considering that psychological need satisfaction and frustration

could be conceptualized not as singular but as independent, the neuroanatomic finding of the

present study seems to be consistent with the theoretical postulates of SDT.

The conclusions that can be drawn from the present findings are limited by two

methodological features of our research design. First, the present study included the

psychological needs for autonomy and competence but excluded the psychological need for

relatedness. We had made this decision before collecting the anatomic data. In future

investigations, we encourage researchers to examine the unique anatomic correlates not only of

autonomy and competence but of relatedness as well. Second, causal inferences are difficult to

draw. It is not clear whether striatum volume leads to a greater capacity to experience

psychological need satisfaction or whether psychological need satisfaction leads to greater

striatum volume. It is also not clear why some individuals possess greater (or lesser) striatum

volume than do others in the first place.

Even while recognizing these limitations, the present study suggests that striatum gray

matter volume, but not insula gray matter volume, shows a positive association with general

psychological need satisfaction. We also found that brain gray matter correlates of psychological

need satisfaction could be distinct from brain gray matter correlates of psychological need

frustration. These neuroanatomic findings offer unique insights to understand the neuroanatomic

bases of psychological need satisfaction and frustration.


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Table 1. Results of the regression analyses identifying brain gray matter correlates of general

psychological need satisfaction and of general psychological need frustration

Brain Area BA Voxels Side MNI Coordinates Maximumt valuex y z

General Psychological Need SatisfactionPositive relationship

Striatum 81 L -8 6 3 3.97

General Psychological Need FrustrationPositive relationship

Lingual gyrus 17 206 L -29 -65 6 4.19Inferior temporal gyrus 37 106 R 63 -64 -10 3.94

Negative relationship Postcentral gyrus 1 105 L -17 -34 59 4.55

Superior temporal gyrus 42 73 R 62 -19 7 3.43

Note. The cluster-wise threshold (correct p < .05) is determined by voxel-wise threshold (p

< .001) and the minimum volume (71 contiguous voxels; 568 mm3).


Figure 1. The gray matter volume of the left striatum was positively correlated with the

degree of participants’ general psychological need satisfactions (p < .001 with at least 71

contiguous voxels; corrected p < .05).

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