Background The attribution of personal relevance, ie relating internal and external stimuli to
establish a sense of belonging, is a common phenomenon in daily life. Although previous
research demonstrated a relationship between reward and personal relevance, their exact
neuronal relationship including the impact of personality traits remains unclear.
Methodology/Principal Findings Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we applied
an experimental paradigm that allowed us to explore the neural response evoked by reward�…

Neuroscience has increasingly explored the neural mechanisms underlying our sense of
self. Recent studies have demonstrated the recruitment of regions like the ventral tegmental
area, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the ventral striatum to self-specific stimuli—regions
typically associated with reward-related processing. This raises the question of whether
there is a relationship between self and reward and, if so, how these different fields can be
linked. Three relationship models that aim to explore the relationship between self and�…