Self-face recognition activates a frontoparietal mirror network in the right hemisphere: an event-related fMRI study

Self-recognition has been demonstrated by a select number of primate species and is often used as an index of self-awareness. Whether a specialized neural mechanism for self-face recognition in humans exists remains unclear. We used event-related fMRI to investigate bra in regions selectively activated by images of one's own face. Ten right-handed normal subjects viewed digital morphs between their own face and a gender-matched familiar other presented in a random sequence. Subjects were instructed to press a button with the right hand if the image looked like their own face, and another button if it looked like a familiar or scrambled face. Contrasting the trials in which images contain more self with those containing more familiar other revealed signal changes in the right hemisphere (RH) including the inferior parietal lobule, inferior frontal gyrus, and inferior occipital gyros. The opposite contrast revealed voxels with higher signal intensity for images of other than for self in the medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus. Additional contrasts against baseline revealed that activity in the self minus other contrasts represent signal increases compared to baseline (null events) in self trials, while activity in the other minus self contrasts represent deactivations relative to baseline during self trials. Thus, a unique network involving frontoparietal structures described as part of the mirror neuron system in the RH underlies self-face recognition, while regions comprising the default/resting state network deactivate less for familiar others. We provide a model that reconciles these findings and previously published work to account for the modulations in these two networks previously implicated in social cognition. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.