Is it about the self or the significance? An fMRI study of self-name recognition

Love and hate do not modulate the attentional blink but improve overall performance

How may feelings of love and hate impact people's attention? We used a modified Attentional Blink (AB) task in which 300 participants were asked to categorise a name representing a person towards whom they felt either hate, love, or neutral (first target) plus identify a number word (second target), both embedded in a rapidly presented stream of other words. The lag to the second target was systematically varied. Contrary to our hypothesis, results revealed that both hated and loved names resulted in higher accuracy for the second target than neutral names, which was largely independent of lag. Also, there we observed no sustained transfer effects of love and hate onto neutral name trials. The findings differ from prior research on attentional blink and transient, non-personal, stimulus-driven emotions, suggesting that interpersonal feelings activate different attention-relevant mechanisms. Relevant to future research, we speculate that love and hate are motivators of goal-directed behaviour that facilitate subsequent information processing.

Differences in own-face but not own-name discrimination between autistic and neurotypical adults: A fast periodic visual stimulation-EEG study

Self-related processing is thought to be altered in autism, with several studies reporting that autistic individuals show a diminished neural response relative to neurotypicals for their own name and face. However, evidence remains scarce and is mostly based on event-related potential studies. Here, we used EEG to measure the neural activity of autistic adults (20 for faces, 27 for names) and neurotypical adults (24 for faces, 25 for names) while they were watching rapidly alternating faces and names, through a relatively new technique called Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation. We presented strangers' faces or names at a base frequency of 5.77 Hz, while one's own, a close other's, and a specific stranger's face/name was presented at an oddball frequency of 1.154 Hz. The neurotypical group showed a significantly greater response to their own face than both close other and stranger faces, and a greater response for close other than for stranger faces. In contrast, in the autism group, own and close other faces showed stronger responses than the stranger's face, but the difference between own and close other faces was not significant in a bilateral parieto-occipital cluster. No group differences in the enhanced response to familiar names were found. These results replicate and extend results obtained using traditional electroencephalographic techniques which suggest atypical responses to self-relevant stimuli in autism.

Specificity in the processing of a subject's own name

Subject's own name (SON) is widely used in both daily life and the clinic. Event-related potential (ERP)-based studies have previously detected several ERP components related to SON processing; however, as most of these studies used SON as a deviant stimulus, it was not possible to determine whether these components were SON-specific. To identify SON-specific ERP components, we adopted a passive listening task with EEG data recording involving 25 subjects. The auditory stimuli were a SON, a friend's name (FN), an unfamiliar name (UN) selected from other subjects' names and seven different unfamiliar names (DUNs). The experimental settings included Equal-probabilistic, Frequent-SON, Frequent-FN and Frequent-UN conditions. The results showed that SON consistently evoked a frontocentral SON-related negativity (SRN) within 210-350 ms under all conditions, which was not detected with the other names. Meanwhile, a late positive potential evoked by SON was found to be affected by stimulus probability, showing no significant difference between the SON and the other names in the Frequent-SON condition, or between the SON and a FN in the Frequent-UN condition. Taken together, our findings indicated that the SRN was a SON-specific ERP component, suggesting that distinct neural mechanism underly the processing of a SON.

Specific Neural Mechanisms of Self-Cognition and the Application of Brainprint Recognition

The important identity attribute of self-information presents unique cognitive processing advantages in psychological experiments and has become a research hotspot in psychology and brain science. The unique processing mode of own information has been widely verified in visual and auditory experiments, which is a unique neural processing method for own name, face, voice and other information. In the study of individual behavior, the behavioral uniqueness of self-information is reflected in the faster response of the human brain to self-information, the higher attention to self-information, and the stronger memory level of self-reference. Brain imaging studies have also presented the uniqueness of self-cognition in the brain. EEG studies have shown that self-information induces significant P300 components. fMRI and PET results show that the differences in self and non-self working patterns were located in the frontal and parietal lobes. In addition, this paper combines the self-uniqueness theory and brain-print recognition technology to explore the application of self-information in experimental design, channel combination strategy and identity feature selection of brainprints.

Decoding subject's own name in the primary auditory cortex

Current studies have shown that perception of subject's own name (SON) involves multiple multimodal brain regions, while activities in unimodal sensory regions (i.e., primary auditory cortex) and their interaction with multimodal regions during the self-processing remain unclear. To answer this, we combined multivariate pattern analysis and dynamic causal modelling analysis to explore the regional activation pattern and inter-region effective connection during the perception of SON. We found that SON and other names could be decoded from the activation pattern in the primary auditory cortex. In addition, we found an excitatory effect of SON on connections from the anterior insula/inferior frontal gyrus to the primary auditory cortex, and to the temporoparietal junction. Our findings extended the current knowledge of self-processing by showing that primary auditory cortex could discriminate SON from other names. Furthermore, our findings highlighted the importance of influence of the insula on the primary auditory cortex during self-processing.

Shared surname enhances our preference to famous people: multimodal EEG evidence

Multimodal Electroencephalography techniques were used to determine whether the name of famous people undergoes self-relevant processing due to a shared surname with participants. During a three-stimulus oddball task, brain activity was recorded when participants suddenly saw their own names (self-name [SN]), a famous name with the same surname (FNS), or a famous name with a different surname (FND). While familiarity ratings were kept similar across the three kinds of name, behavioral analysis showed a higher rating on self-relevance for SN than for FNS, which, in turn, received a higher rating than FND. P2 amplitudes demonstrated a similar enhancement in response to SN and FNS compared to FND while P3 amplitudes and power of theta band (3.5-6 Hz) oscillation were more pronounced in response to SN than to FNS, which in turn elicited larger P3 and theta activities than FND. These findings, excluding the influence of familiarity, revealed that famous people sharing same surname with us could elicit a reliable self-relevant effect, despite lack of real social connection. This self-relevant processing may be embodied by the P3 amplitude and theta band neural oscillation in EEG.

How does self name influence the neural processing of emotional prosody? An ERP study

In this study, we investigated whether self-relevant information can accelerate the processing of emotional information. Our experiment, based on a passive auditory oddball paradigm, involved recording electroencephalography while participants listened to stimuli comprising their own names (ONs) and unfamiliar names (UNs) spoken with varying emotional prosody. At 220-300 ms, mismatch negativity (MMN) was more negative for ONs and angry prosody than for UNs and neutral prosody, respectively. These results suggest that attention is involuntarily attracted by ONs and emotional prosody, and that both types of information are given priority processing, even under pre-attentive conditions. Importantly, ONs with angry prosody induced more negative MMN than did similar UNs and ONs with neutral prosody, which indicates that the motivational significance embedded in angry prosody promotes the self-reference effect and, thus, involves more attention resources. At 300-500 ms, ONs triggered smaller P3a than did UNs, suggesting that less cognitive resources are required to process self-relevant information. These results suggest that self-relevant and emotional information of preferential processing interact with each other during the pre-attentive stage, with self-reference enhancing the processing of emotional information.

Does Implicit Self-Reference Effect Occur by the Instantaneous Own-Name?

Self-reference effect (SRE) is defined as better recall or recognition performance when the materials that are memorized refer to the self. The SRE paradigm usually requires participants to explicitly refer items to themselves, but some researchers have found that the SRE also can occur for implicitly self-referenced items. Few studies though have investigated the effect of self-related stimuli without awareness. In this study, we presented self-related (participants’ names) or other (other’s names or nouns) stimuli for a very short time between masks and then explicitly presented subsequent trait adjectives to participants. Recognition performance showed no significant differences between the own-name and the other two conditions in Experiment 1 that had random-order conditions. On the other hand, the result of Experiment 2 that had block-order conditions and greater prime stimuli suggests that SRE can occur as a result of the instantaneous stimulus: Subjects who showed better memory performance also had relatively high recognition of the trait adjectives that they viewed after their instantaneously presented own-name. This effect would show that self-representation can be activated by self-related stimuli without awareness and that subsequent items are unconsciously referenced to that self-representation.

Self-Related Stimuli Decoding With Auditory and Visual Modalities Using Stereo-Electroencephalography

Name recognition plays important role in self-related cognitive processes and also contributes to a variety of clinical applications, such as autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and consciousness disorder analysis. However, most previous name-related studies usually adopted noninvasive EEG or fMRI recordings, which were limited by low spatial resolution and temporal resolution, respectively, and thus millisecond-level response latencies in precise brain regions could not be measured using these noninvasive recordings. By invasive stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) recordings that have high resolution in both the spatial and temporal domain, the current study distinguished the neural response to one's own name or a stranger's name, and explored common active brain regions in both auditory and visual modalities. The neural activities were classified using spatiotemporal features of high-gamma, beta, and alpha band. Results showed that different names could be decoded using multi-region SEEG signals, and the best classification performance was achieved at high gamma (60–145 Hz) band. In this case, auditory and visual modality-based name classification accuracies were 84.5 ± 8.3 and 79.9 ± 4.6%, respectively. Additionally, some single regions such as the supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and insula could also achieve remarkable accuracies for both modalities, supporting their roles in the processing of self-related information. The average latency of the difference between the two responses in these precise regions was 354 ± 63 and 285 ± 59 ms in the auditory and visual modality, respectively. This study suggested that name recognition was attributed to a distributed brain network, and the subsets with decoding capabilities might be potential implanted regions for awareness detection and cognition evaluation.

The influence of self-referential stimuli on duration perception

Previous studies have shown that stimuli with subjective salience could affect duration estimation. Although self-referential stimuli possess high biological and social importance, no prior study has examined whether and how self-referential information affects duration perception. Experiment 1 used the temporal bisection task to investigate participants' duration estimation of the presentation of their own name versus familiar and unfamiliar names. The results showed that participants overestimated the duration of their own name and became more sensitive to duration perception in such trials when compared with stranger's names. Given the specificity of personal name, Experiment 2 used two types of personality-trait words in self-referential and friend-referential manner as the targets of duration perception. The duration of self-referential negative trait words was perceived to be longer relative to friend-referential negative trait words. The mechanism underlying the subjective time dilation effect of self-referential information possibly involves the engagement of increased attentional resources, which could allow the individual to preserve a certain level of stability and positivity of self-knowledge.

An attachment theoretical perspective for the neural representation of close others

Recent investigations in neuroscience elucidate the neural basis of close other cognitive representations, which serve functions central to our health and happiness. Yet, there are persistent barriers to this research, including disparate research methods and the absence of a common theoretical background. The present review connects neuroimaging and attachment theory within a novel social, cognitive and affective framework. We apply attachment theory to understand why we would expect cognitive representations of close others to be different from other social neural representations. Developing reliable markers of attachment is a critical step in mapping close other neural representations. We then examine existing neuroimaging literature on close other representations, highlighting the recruitment of neural systems supporting reward, motivation and distress alleviation, in addition to the mirror neuron system, default network and salience network. We then review the methodologies of past studies, revealing a diverse array of self-report measures assessing `closeness' and social cognitive tasks that, taken together, preclude meaningful synthesis of findings. Lastly, we discuss specific behavioral measures of attachment and closeness with recommendations for the field. This attachment framework integrates brain and behavioral sciences and unites theoretical principles with empirical methods to further our understanding of how the brain represents close others.

Internet Use Influences Self-Related Process: Evidence From Behavior and ERPs

The present study aimed to examine whether a self-related stimulus produces a self-related process bias between pathological-tendency Internet users and ordinary Internet users. Participants were asked to judge the color of the target stimulus' frame (Internet pictures) in an implicit priming task, which enclosed the prime of self/other related words and the target of the online image in sequence. Results from Experiment 1 showed that response time (RT) in the self-related condition was significantly longer than that of the other related condition. Further analysis showed that RT in the self-related condition was significantly longer than that under the other related conditions for pathological-tendency Internet users but not for ordinary Internet users. In Experiment 2, behavior results demonstrated that RT under the self-related condition was significantly longer than that in the other-related condition for both groups, and the RT was shorter for pathological-tendency Internet users than that of the ordinary Internet users. Moreover, ERP data showed that the N2 amplitude was larger in the self-related condition than that of other related conditions for pathological-tendency Internet users but not for ordinary Internet users. The amplitudes of late positive component (LPC) was smaller in the self-related condition than those of the other related conditions. Hence, the Internet use influenced the inhibition control in self-unrelated stimuli and automatically retrieved the self-related stimuli.

The impact of self-esteem on the preferential processing of self-related information: Electrophysiological correlates of explicit self vs. other evaluation

Preferential processing of self-related information is a well-documented phenomenon on both the behavioral and neural levels. However, the impact of self-esteem on this self-preference has not been studied in a systematic way. Here, the electrophysiological correlates of explicit self-reflection were investigated in individuals with low (LSE) and high self-esteem (HSE). Participants evaluated trait adjectives in reference to the self or to an “other” person (close-other, famous) while EEG was recorded. The analysis of event-related potentials focused on the late positive component (LPC), which exhibits a fronto-central distribution and latency over 500 ms. In both LSE and HSE groups, the amplitudes of LPC were enhanced in the self condition when compared to control conditions (both close-other and famous). Crucially, LPC amplitudes in the HSE group were significantly higher than in the LSE group. Moreover, the self-preference effect, defined as the difference between amplitudes of LPC associated with the evaluation of words in relation to oneself vs. other people, was significantly higher in the HSE group than in the LSE group. Overall, our findings indicate that people with high self-esteem tend to engage in self-referential processing to a higher extent.

Dissociable patterns of brain activity for mentalizing about known others: a role for attachment

The human brain tracks dynamic changes within the social environment, forming and updating representations of individuals in our social milieu. This mechanism of social navigation builds an increasingly complex map of persons with whom we are familiar and form attachments to guide adaptive social behaviors. We examined the neural representation of known others along a continuum of attachment using fMRI. Heterosexual adults (N = 29, 16 females), in romantic relationships for more than 2 years, made trait judgments for a romantic partner, parent, close friend, familiar acquaintance and self-during scanning. Multivariate analysis, partial least squares, was used to identify whole-brain patterns of brain activation associated with trait judgments of known others across a continuum of attachment. Across conditions, trait judgments engaged the default network and lateral prefrontal cortex. Judgments about oneself and a partner were associated with a common activation pattern encompassing anterior and middle cingulate, posterior superior temporal sulcus, as well as anterior insula. Parent and close friend judgments engaged medial and anterior temporal lobe regions. These results provide novel evidence that mentalizing about known familiar others results in differential brain activity. We provide initial evidence that the representation of adult attachment is a distinguishing feature of these differences.

Temporal Features of the Differentiation between Self-Name and Religious Leader Name among Christians: An ERP Study

Existing neuroimaging studies have shown that religion, as a subjective culture, can influence self-referential processing. However, the time course of this impact remains unclear. The present study examined how Christians process their own names, the name of their religious leader (i.e., Jesus), and a famous person’s name (i.e., Yao Ming). Behavioral and EEG data were recorded while the participants performed a name-color judgment task for these three names. The behavioral data showed no significant differences in reaction time or accuracy among the names. However, the ERP data showed that the P200 and P300 amplitudes elicited by the self-name and religious leader name were larger than those elicited by the famous name. Furthermore, the self-name also elicited a larger P300 amplitude than the religious leader name did. These results suggested that both the self-name and the religious leader name were processed preferentially due to their important social value for the self as compared to a generally famous name. Importantly, the dissociation between the self-name and the religious leader name was observed at a high-order cognitive stage, which might be attributed to their different roles in one’s self-concept.

Present and past selves: a steady-state visual evoked potentials approach to self-face processing

The self-face has a prioritized status in the processing of incoming visual inputs. As the self-face changes over the lifespan, this stimulus seems to be well-suited for investigation of the self across time. Here, steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP, oscillatory responses to periodic stimulation with a frequency that mirrors the frequency of stimulation) were used to investigate this topic. Different types of faces (present self, past self, close-other’s, unknown, scrambled) flickered four times per second in two types of stimulation (‘identical’, with the same image of a given type of face; ‘different’, with different images of the same type of face). Each of the 10 stimulation sessions lasted 90 seconds and was repeated three times. EEG data were recorded and analyzed in 20 participants. In general, faces evoked higher SSVEP than scrambled faces. The impact of identical and different stimulation was similar for faces and scrambled faces: SSVEP to different stimuli (faces, scrambled faces) was enhanced in comparison to identical ones. Present self-faces evoked higher SSVEP responses than past self-faces in the different stimulation condition only. Thus, our results showed that the physical aspects of the present and past selves are differentiated on the neural level in the absence of an overt behavior.

The role of predictive coding in the pathogenesis of delirium

Delirium and dementia represent an emerging global crisis in healthcare. Attempts have been made to identify the pathognomonic feature that would make delirium stand out from dementia but unfortunately the global neural dysfunction of both disorders has made the establishment of a direct measurement difficult. Modern conceptualisations of delirium have been influenced by the assessment tools used to assess, detect, and analyse its complex and transient nature. Recent publication of the DSM-V criteria for delirium has marginally altered the previous DSM-IV criteria with a focus upon inattention with vague terms such as consciousness downplayed. Such an alteration has been found to be restrictive and thus impact upon delirium case identification. Although these findings are approximating the empirical state of delirium as measured by validated instruments, a more refined neuroscientifically informed phenomenological framework is required in order to enhance the theoretical understanding of delirium assessment and resolve these challenges. One such application is the predictive coding (PC) model, also known as the hierarchical Bayesian inference model, to interpreting delirium pathophysiology. Therefore, the aims of this paper are to 1) propose the hypothesis that delirium pathophysiology can be explained in terms of the PC model, 2) support this hypothesis by applying this model to current methods of assessing delirium phenomenology, particularly attention, and 3) outline a future programme of research to test many of the parameters of this application.

Self-relevance effects and label choice: Strong variations in label-matching performance due to non-self-relevant factors

Merely associating one's self with a stimulus may be enough to enhance performance in a label-matching paradigm (Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012), implying prioritized processing of self-relevant stimuli. For instance, labeling a square as SELF and a circle as OTHER yields speeded performance when verifying square-SELF compared with circle-OTHER label matches. The precise causes of such effects are unclear. We propose that prioritized processing of label-matches can occur for reasons other than self-relevance. Here, we employ the label-matching paradigm to show similar benefits for non-self-relevant labels (SNAKE, FROG, and GREG) over a frequently employed, non-self-relevant control label (OTHER). These benefits suggest the possibility that self-relevance effects in the label-matching paradigm may be confounded with other properties of labels that lead to relative performance benefits, such as concreteness. The size of self-relevance effects may be overestimated in prior work employing the label-matching paradigm, which calls for greater care in the choice of control labels to determine the true magnitude of self-relevance effects. Our results additionally indicate the possibility of a powerful effect of concreteness (and related properties) on associative memory performance.

Present-self, past-self and the close-other: neural correlates of assigning trait adjectives to oneself and others

Information regarding the past-self may be viewed as information referring to other people. However, evidence supporting this notion at the neural level is rather sparse and it remains unclear whether the past-self is processed like any 'other' or like the close-other only. The aim of this event-related potential study was to investigate this issue. A reflection task requiring evaluation of positive and negative trait adjectives with respect to present- and past-self, a close-other and a famous person was applied. We hypothesized that the past-self and close-other conditions would share their neural underpinnings. The process of reflection on the past-self and close-other was indeed associated with similar mean amplitudes of the late positive component (LPC), whereas in the case of the past-self vs. famous person comparison LPC was significantly enhanced for the past-self. Analogous effects were observed when LPC was calculated for trials with traits judged as either suitable or unsuitable to describe a person who was the target of reflection. Thus, these findings suggest that the processing of information related to the past-self resembles processing of information related to a personally relevant other. Moreover, sex-differences were observed in reaction times and LPC amplitudes for responses reflecting the positivity bias.

The temporal primacy of self-related stimuli and negative stimuli: an ERP-based comparative study

Numerous studies have shown there exist attention biases for self-related and negative stimuli. Few studies, however, have been carried out to compare the effects of such stimuli on the neural mechanisms of early attentional alertness and subsequent cognitive processing. The purpose of the present study was to examine the temporal primacy of both self-related stimuli and negative stimuli in the neurophysiologic level. In a modified oddball task, event-related potentials of the deviant stimuli (i.e., self-face, negative face and neutral face) were recorded. Results revealed that larger P2 amplitudes were elicited by self-related and negative stimuli than by neutral stimuli. Negative stimuli, however, elicited shorter P2 latencies than self-related and neutral stimuli. As for the N2 component, self-related and negative stimuli elicited smaller amplitudes and shorter latencies than neutral stimuli, but otherwise did not differ. Self-related stimuli also elicited larger P3 and late positive component (LPC) amplitudes than negative and neutral stimuli. The pattern of results suggests that the primacy of negative stimuli occurred at an early attention stage of processing, while the primacy of self-related stimuli occurred at the subsequent cognitive evaluation and memory stage.

Self-Advantage in the Online World

In the current research, screen name was employed to explore the possible cognitive advantage for self-related online material. The results showed that one’s own screen name and real name were detected faster than famous names in both visual search and discrimination tasks. In comparison, there was no difference in visual search speed for the two kinds of self-related names. These findings extend self-advantage from the physical world to the virtual online environment and confirm its robustness. In addition, the present findings also suggest that familiarity might not be the determining factor for self-advantage.

How the Non-attending Brain Hears Its Owner's Name

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how attended and non-attended hearing of a subject's own name (SON) captures his or her attention. It has been reported that SON presentation activates the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is considered to be the key region for self-recognition. However, it remains unclear whether non-attended SON presentation also activates the mPFC. We hypothesized that an attended SON should activate mPFC more than a non-attended SON. To test this hypothesis, we designed an experiment in which we manipulated the task-relevance of SON; in a name-detection task, SON was a target stimulus, whereas in a tone-judgment task, SON was unrelated to the task. In each condition, identical sets of sound stimuli were presented. SON activated mPFC in the name-detection task but not in the tone-judgment task, supporting our hypothesis. In contrast, non-attended SON activated midbrain reticular formation, thalamus, insula, auditory cortex, and precuneus. We interpreted these to be related to low-level, automatic SON detection. Thus, hearing one's own name in a non-attended condition does not primarily engage the mPFC, but recruits a cortico-subcortical auditory attention network; this may account for the oft-observed salience of SON.

Neural correlates of own and close-other's name recognition: ERP evidence

One’s own name seems to have a special status in the processing of incoming information. In event-related potential (ERP) studies this preferential status has mainly been associated with higher P300 to one’s own name than to other names. Some studies showed preferential responses to own name even for earlier ERP components. However, instead of just being self-specific, these effects could be related to the processing of any highly relevant and/or frequently encountered stimuli. If this is the case: (1) processing of other highly relevant and highly familiar names (e.g., names of friends, partners, siblings, etc.) should be associated with similar ERP responses as processing of one’s own name and (2) processing of own and close others’ names should result in larger amplitudes of early and late ERP components than processing of less relevant and less familiar names (e.g., names of famous people, names of strangers, etc.). To test this hypothesis we measured and analyzed ERPs from 62 scalp electrodes in 22 subjects. Subjects performed a speeded two-choice recognition task—familiar vs. unfamiliar—with one’s own name being treated as one of the familiar names. All stimuli were presented visually. We found that amplitudes of P200, N250 and P300 did not differ between one’s own and close-other’s names. Crucially, they were significantly larger to own and close-other’s names than to other names (unknown and famous for P300 and unknown for P200 and N250). Our findings suggest that preferential processing of one’s own name is due to its personal-relevance and/or familiarity factors. This pattern of results speaks for a common preference in processing of different kinds of socially relevant stimuli.

But do you think I'm cool? Developmental differences in striatal recruitment during direct and reflected social self-evaluations

The current fMRI study investigates the neural foundations of evaluating oneself and others during early adolescence and young adulthood. Eighteen early adolescents (ages 11-14, M=12.6) and 19 young adults (ages 22-31, M=25.6) evaluated whether academic, physical, and social traits described themselves directly (direct self-evaluations), described their best friend directly (direct other-evaluations), described themselves from their best friend's perspective (reflected self-evaluations), or in general could change over time (control malleability-evaluations). Compared to control evaluations, both adolescents and adults recruited cortical midline structures during direct and reflected self-evaluations, as well as during direct other-evaluations, converging with previous research. However, unique to this study was a significant three-way interaction between age group, evaluative perspective, and domain within bilateral ventral striatum. Region of interest analyses demonstrated a significant evaluative perspective by domain interaction within the adolescent sample only. Adolescents recruited greatest bilateral ventral striatum during reflected social self-evaluations, which was positively correlated with age and pubertal development. These findings suggest that reflected social self-evaluations, made from the inferred perspective of a close peer, may be especially self-relevant, salient, or rewarding to adolescent self-processing--particularly during the progression through adolescence - and this feature persists into adulthood.

Neural correlates of own name and own face detection in autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition clinically characterized by social interaction and communication difficulties. To date, the majority of research efforts have focused on brain mechanisms underlying the deficits in interpersonal social cognition associated with ASD. Recent empirical and theoretical work has begun to reveal evidence for a reduced or even absent self-preference effect in patients with ASD. One may hypothesize that this is related to the impaired attentional processing of self-referential stimuli. The aim of our study was to test this hypothesis. We investigated the neural correlates of face and name detection in ASD. Four categories of face/name stimuli were used: own, close-other, famous, and unknown. Event-related potentials were recorded from 62 electrodes in 23 subjects with ASD and 23 matched control subjects. P100, N170, and P300 components were analyzed. The control group clearly showed a significant self-preference effect: higher P300 amplitude to the presentation of own face and own name than to the close-other, famous, and unknown categories, indicating preferential attentional engagement in processing of self-related information. In contrast, detection of both own and close-other's face and name in the ASD group was associated with enhanced P300, suggesting similar attention allocation for self and close-other related information. These findings suggest that attention allocation in the ASD group is modulated by the personal significance factor, and that the self-preference effect is absent if self is compared to close-other. These effects are similar for physical and non-physical aspects of the autistic self. In addition, lateralization of face and name processing is attenuated in ASD, suggesting atypical brain organization.

Social cognition and the cerebellum: a meta-analysis of over 350 fMRI studies

This meta-analysis explores the role of the cerebellum in social cognition. Recent meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies since 2008 demonstrate that the cerebellum is only marginally involved in social cognition and emotionality, with a few meta-analyses pointing to an involvement of at most 54% of the individual studies. In this study, novel meta-analyses of over 350 fMRI studies, dividing up the domain of social cognition in homogeneous subdomains, confirmed this low involvement of the cerebellum in conditions that trigger the mirror network (e.g., when familiar movements of body parts are observed) and the mentalizing network (when no moving body parts or unfamiliar movements are present). There is, however, one set of mentalizing conditions that strongly involve the cerebellum in 50-100% of the individual studies. In particular, when the level of abstraction is high, such as when behaviors are described in terms of traits or permanent characteristics, in terms of groups rather than individuals, in terms of the past (episodic autobiographic memory) or the future rather than the present, or in terms of hypothetical events that may happen. An activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis conducted in this study reveals that the cerebellum is critically implicated in social cognition and that the areas of the cerebellum which are consistently involved in social cognitive processes show extensive overlap with the areas involved in sensorimotor (during mirror and self-judgments tasks) as well as in executive functioning (across all tasks). We discuss the role of the cerebellum in social cognition in general and in higher abstraction mentalizing in particular. We also point out a number of methodological limitations of some available studies on the social brain that hamper the detection of cerebellar activity.

Cortical midline structures and autobiographical-self processes: an activation-likelihood estimation meta-analysis

The autobiographical-self refers to a mental state derived from the retrieval and assembly of memories regarding one’s biography. The process of retrieval and assembly, which can focus on biographical facts or personality traits or some combination thereof, is likely to vary according to the domain chosen for an experiment. To date, the investigation of the neural basis of this process has largely focused on the domain of personality traits using paradigms that contrasted the evaluation of one’s traits (self-traits) with those of another person’s (other-traits). This has led to the suggestion that cortical midline structures (CMSs) are specifically related to self states. Here, with the goal of testing this suggestion, we conducted activation-likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses based on data from 28 neuroimaging studies. The ALE results show that both self-traits and other-traits engage CMSs; however, the engagement of medial prefrontal cortex is greater for self-traits than for other-traits, while the posteromedial cortex is more engaged for other-traits than for self-traits. These findings suggest that the involvement CMSs is not specific to the evaluation of one’s own traits, but also occurs during the evaluation of another person’s traits.

Associative account of self-cognition: extended forward model and multi-layer structure

The neural correlates of "self" identified by neuroimaging studies differ depending on which aspects of self are addressed. Here, three categories of self are proposed based on neuroimaging findings and an evaluation of the likely underlying cognitive processes. The physical self, representing self-agency of action, body-ownership, and bodily self-recognition, is supported by the sensory and motor association cortices located primarily in the right hemisphere. The interpersonal self, representing the attention or intentions of others directed at the self, is supported by several amodal association cortices in the dorsomedial frontal and lateral posterior cortices. The social self, representing the self as a collection of context-dependent social-values, is supported by the ventral aspect of the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. Despite differences in the underlying cognitive processes and neural substrates, all three categories of self are likely to share the computational characteristics of the forward model, which is underpinned by internal schema or learned associations between one's behavioral output and the consequential input. Additionally, these three categories exist within a hierarchical layer structure based on developmental processes that updates the schema through the attribution of prediction error. In this account, most of the association cortices critically contribute to some aspect of the self through associative learning while the primary regions involved shift from the lateral to the medial cortices in a sequence from the physical to the interpersonal to the social self.

Changes in effective connectivity by propofol sedation

Mechanisms of propofol-induced loss of consciousness remain poorly understood. Recent fMRI studies have shown decreases in functional connectivity during unconsciousness induced by this anesthetic agent. Functional connectivity does not provide information of directional changes in the dynamics observed during unconsciousness. The aim of the present study was to investigate, in healthy humans during an auditory task, the changes in effective connectivity resulting from propofol induced loss of consciousness. We used Dynamic Causal Modeling for fMRI (fMRI-DCM) to assess how causal connectivity is influenced by the anesthetic agent in the auditory system. Our results suggest that the dynamic observed in the auditory system during unconsciousness induced by propofol, can result in a mixture of two effects: a local inhibitory connectivity increase and a decrease in the effective connectivity in sensory cortices.

The neural correlates of identity faking and concealment: an FMRI study

The neural basis of self and identity has received extensive research. However, most of these existing studies have focused on situations where the internal representation of the self is consistent with the external one. The present study used fMRI methodology to examine the neural correlates of two different types of identity conflict: identity faking and concealment. Participants were presented with a sequence of names and asked to either conceal their own identity or fake another one. The results revealed that the right insular cortex and bilaterally inferior frontal gyrus were more active for identity concealment compared to the control condition, whereas identity faking elicited a significantly larger percentage signal increase than the control condition in the right superior frontal gyrus, left calcarine, and right caudate. These results suggest that different neural systems associated with both identity processing and deception were involved in identity concealment and faking.

Cross-modal pattern of brain activations associated with the processing of self- and significant other's name

Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the patterns of brain activity during the processing of personally relevant names (e.g., own name, friend's name, partner's name, etc.) and the names of famous people (e.g., celebrities) are different. However, it is not known how the activity in this network is influenced by the modality of the presented stimuli. In this fMRI study, we investigated the pattern of brain activations during the recognition of aurally and visually presented full names of the subject, a significant other, a famous person and unknown individuals. In both modalities, we found that the processing of self-name and the significant other's name was associated with increased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Acoustic presentations of these names also activated bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG). This pattern of results supports the role of MPFC in the processing of personally relevant information, irrespective of their modality.

Neuroimaging self-esteem: a fMRI study of individual differences in women

Although neuroimaging studies strongly implicate the medial prefrontal cortex (ventral and dorsal), cingulate gyrus (anterior and posterior), precuneus and temporoparietal cortex in mediating self-referential processing (SRP), little is known about the neural bases mediating individual differences in valenced SRP, that is, processes intrinsic to self-esteem. This study investigated the neural correlates of experimentally engendered valenced SRP via the Visual–Verbal Self-Other Referential Processing Task in 20 women with fMRI. Participants viewed pictures of themselves or unknown other women during separate trials while covertly rehearsing ‘I am’ or ‘She is’, followed by reading valenced trait adjectives, thus variably associating the self/other with positivity/negativity. Response within dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex and left temporoparietal cortex varied with individual differences in both pre-task rated self-descriptiveness of the words, as well as task-induced affective responses. Results are discussed as they relate to a social cognitive and affective neuroscience view of self-esteem.