The Self-Concept Is Represented in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Terms of Self-Importance

Knowledge about one's personality, the self-concept, shapes human experience. Social cognitive neuroscience has made strides addressing the question of where and how the self is represented in the brain. The answer, however, remains elusive. We conducted two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments (the second preregistered) with human male and female participants employing a self-reference task with a broad range of attributes and carrying out a searchlight representational similarity analysis (RSA). The importance of attributes to self-identity was represented in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), whereas mPFC activation was unrelated both to self-descriptiveness of attributes (experiments 1 and 2) and impor-tance of attributes to a friend's self-identity (experiment 2). Our research provides a comprehensive answer to the abovemen-tioned question: The self-concept is conceptualized in terms of self-importance and represented in the mPFC.

Automated summary

Knowledge about one's personality, the self-concept, shapes human experience. Social cognitive neuroscience has made progress in understanding how the self is represented in the brain, but the answer remains elusive. Through two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we found that the importance of attributes to self-identity is represented in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is unrelated to the self-descriptiveness of attributes and importance of attributes to a friend's self-identity. Our research provides a comprehensive answer: The self-concept is conceptualized in terms of self-importance and represented in the mPFC.