Reminders of mortality weaken P2 amplitude underlying both self-reflection and mother-reflection

Abstract

Recent research has repeatedly shown that people usually escape self-related thoughts to behaviorally buffer the anxiety elicited by death, and that reminders of mortality influence the brain activations related to self-related thoughts. Meanwhile, neuroimaging studies have suggested an overlapped neural representation of self and intimate others (e.g., mother) in Chinese individuals. However, whether mortality salience (MS) influences the neural processing of both self and mother in Chinese individuals has not been examined. Therefore, the current study recorded the event-related potentials in response to self-reflection and mother-reflection after MS priming. Our results showed that relative to neutral priming, MS priming significantly decreased the peak of P2 in response to both self-related and mother-related traits. Our work suggested a similar neural mechanism of the avoidance of both self-focus and mother-focus after being reminded of mortality.