Brain gray matter correlates of general psychological need satisfaction: a voxel-based morphometry study

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 many have done so by using functional neuroimaging data collection methods. According to these studies, the activities of the striatum, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), insula, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) 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 that these individual differences would be based on differences in their structural brain volumes in these brain areas. Region of interest and whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses of 50 participants’ anatomic MRI scans to predict their self-reported need satisfaction over the last year found that only ventral striatum gray matter volume, but not the gray matter volumes of the dorsal striatum, OFC, insula, and ACC, positively correlated with extent of psychological need satisfaction. These neuroanatomic findings offer unique insights to understand the neuroanatomic bases of psychological need satisfaction.