Levorsen Marie, Aoki Ryuta, Sedikides Constantine, Izuma Keise
School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
Graduate School of Humanities, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo 192-0397, Japan.
J Neurosci. 2025 May 28;45(22):e2378242025. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2378-24.2025.
Past cognitive neuroscience research has demonstrated that thinking about both the self and other activates the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a central hub of the default mode network. The mPFC is also implicated in other cognitive processes, such as introspection and autobiographical memory, rendering elusive its exact role during thinking about the self. Specifically, it is unclear whether the same cognitive process explains the common mPFC involvement or distinct processes are responsible for the mPFC activation overlap. In this preregistered functional magnetic resonance imaging study with 35 male and female human participants, we investigated whether and to what extent mPFC activation patterns during self-reference judgment could be explained by activation patterns during the tasks of other-reference judgment, introspection, and autobiographical memory. Multivoxel pattern analysis showed that only in the mPFC were neural responses both concurrently different and similar across tasks. Furthermore, multiple regression and variance partitioning analyses indicated that each task (i.e., other-reference, introspection, and memory) uniquely and jointly explained significant variances in mPFC activation during self-reference. These findings suggest that the self-reference task engages multiple cognitive processes shared with other tasks, with the mPFC serving as a crucial hub where essential information is integrated to support judgments based on internally constructed representations.
过去的认知神经科学研究表明，思考自我和他人都会激活内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC），它是默认模式网络的核心枢纽。mPFC还参与其他认知过程，如内省和自传体记忆，这使得其在思考自我时的确切作用难以捉摸。具体而言，尚不清楚是相同的认知过程解释了mPFC的共同参与，还是不同的过程导致了mPFC激活的重叠。在这项对35名男性和女性人类参与者进行的预先注册的功能磁共振成像研究中，我们调查了在自我参照判断过程中mPFC激活模式是否以及在多大程度上可以由他人参照判断、内省和自传体记忆任务中的激活模式来解释。多体素模式分析表明，只有在mPFC中，不同任务之间的神经反应同时存在差异和相似之处。此外，多元回归和方差分解分析表明，每个任务（即他人参照、内省和记忆）都独特且共同地解释了自我参照过程中mPFC激活的显著差异。这些发现表明，自我参照任务涉及与其他任务共享的多个认知过程，mPFC作为一个关键枢纽，整合重要信息以支持基于内部构建表征的判断。
