Self-reference process

When people look at information about themselves that is stored in the brain, they frequently engage in a self-reference process. This mechanism is crucial for memory integration and aids in social cue awareness in people. It is crucial for someone to be able to assess the relevance of information when it is presented because failing to do so could make social interactions more difficult.

Neuroimaging research

Neuroimaging research involves PFC medical activities that entail various self-referencing processes, such as minding pondering and personality characteristic assessments. However, it has not yet been proven if the medical PFC is important for the self-related processes since the neuropsychological evidence suggest that the medical PFC region may not be critical. The study uses human lesion approach to determine if medical PFC relates to self-reference processes.

Methods

The participants involved six participants with lesions and eight participants with brain damage. The patients met the conditions required which were stable circumscribed brain lesions and had no history of psychiatric disorder. There was a group of adults with no history of neurological illness who got picked to be part of the study.

The procedure involved the selection of 270 adjectives, which they arranged depending on the word length. The participants were to make judgment according to three different conditions; self in which case they state if the trait describes the participant, other whereby they state if the trait describes Oprah Winfrey and Case where they state whether the trait is capitalized.

Results and discussion

The results prove that the medical PFC is essential for the self-reference processes and are important for the neural representation of one self. The study involves the calculation of SRE using methods that consisted of memory recognition measures. Even though medical PFC has always been the focus of numerous studies on one’s self, the main question is whether the medical PFC plays a major role in self-referencing processes (Ruby, 2009). The ability of an individual to encode information for self-relevance may help in creation of self-concept and in the individual social functions.

What is self-referential effect and why is the default network expected to be utilized by this form of processing. Self-referencing effect is a tendency for individuals to organize information relating to them differently depending on how they get affected by the information. When individuals are to remember information relating to them, they tend to do it faster than when it is relating to other individuals. The main reason why people utilize this process is because individuals’ psychology gets affected by the way they participate in events.

References

Anderson, S. W., Barrash, J., Bechara, A., & Tranel, D. (2006).Impairments of emotion and real-world complex behavior following childhood- or adult-onset damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12, 224–235.

Bird, C. M., Castelli, F., Malik, O., Frith, U., & Husain, M.(2004). The impact of extensive medial frontal lobe damage on “theory of mind” and cognition. Brain, 127, 914–928.

Buckner, R. L., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., & Schacter, D. L.(2008). The brainʼs default network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 1–38.