Abstract
Self-related information, such as one’s own face, is prioritized by our cognitive system. Whilst recent theoretical developments suggest that this is achieved by an interplay between bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms, their underlying neural dynamics are still poorly understood. Furthermore, it is still matter of discussion as to whether these attentional mechanisms are truly self-specific or instead driven by face familiarity. To address these questions, we used EEG to record the brain activity of twenty-five healthy participants whilst identifying their own face, a friend’s face and a stranger’s face. Time-frequency analysis revealed a greater sustained power decrease in the alpha and beta frequency bands for the self-face, which emerged at late latencies and was maintained even when the face was no longer present. Critically, source analysis showed that this activity was generated in key brain regions for self-face recognition, such as the fusiform gyrus. As in the Myth of Narcissus, our results indicate that one’s own face might have the potential to hijack attention. We suggest that this effect is specific to the self and driven by a top-down attentional control mechanism, which might facilitate further processing of personally relevant events.
Highlights
The self has been of great interest for various fields of research, an interest that can most likely be traced back to ancient Greek culture (Morris, 1994)
We propose that an early bottom-up mechanism might explain the attention-capturing properties of the self-face, whereas the later modulation of attention via top-down control might explain the difficulties in disengaging attentional resources from it
Post-hoc comparisons showed an advantage in self-face recognition (Fig. 2); that is, shorter response times for recognizing the Self-face (542 Æ 10 ms) in comparison with either a Friend (570 Æ 10 ms; t (24) 1⁄4 À3.172, p 1⁄4 .004, 95% CI [-0.045, -.009], d 1⁄4.614) or an Unknown face (562 Æ 8 ms; t (24) 1⁄4 À2.684, p 1⁄4 .013, 95% CI [-0.034, -.004], d 1⁄4.519)
Summary
The self has been of great interest for various fields of research, an interest that can most likely be traced back to ancient Greek culture (Morris, 1994). Over the past few years, research on the neural correlates of the self has increased considerably, leading to the development of new theoretical frameworks (Sui and Gu, 2017). This has been partly due to the potential relevance of this issue for health, since recent evidence suggests that self-processing is altered in many neuropsychological (Sui et al, 2015; Sui et al, 2013) and psychiatric disorders (Grimm et al, 2009; Lemogne et al, 2009; Liemburg et al, 2012). Damage to critical areas for self-face processing, such as the hippocampus or the fusiform gyrus, is linked to a ‘hypo-self-bias’, that is, reduced self-prioritization (Sui et al, 2015)
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