Medial prefrontal cortex differentiates self from mother in Chinese: evidence from self-motivated immigrants

Abstract

Findings from neuroimaging studies suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) differentiates between self and mother in participants from Western cultures, but not in Chinese participants. However, previous research suggests that self-motivated immigrants possess more independent self-construal styles. Thus, it is possible that their independent self-construals might be reflected at the neural level. In the present study, we examined the contribution of the MPFC to self and close other-referential processing of psychological traits in Chinese participants, newly arrived to the United States, in both their native language and in English. We predicted that, contrary to prior findings, the MPFC would differentially represent psychological traits for self and mother. Moreover, this effect would be greatest when performing judgments in English. During fMRI scanning, participants (N = 18) completed a standard self-referential processing task in which they rated whether a series of psychological trait adjectives applied to themselves or to their mothers. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that the MPFC strongly differentiated between self and mother judgments in both languages. However, we found no effect of language in this task. Finally, the posterior cingulate cortex was uniquely sensitive to self-referential judgments in Chinese. These findings indicate that the MPFC differentiates between self and mother among self-motivated immigrants.