Self-construal priming modulates neural substrates of self-awareness. Psychol Sci

ABSTRACT—We used functional magnetic resonance imag-ing to assess whether self-construal priming can change adults ’ self-awareness induced during face perception. After reading essays containing independent or interdepen-dent pronouns (e.g., I or we), participants were scanned while judging the head orientation of images showing their own and familiar faces. Neural activity in the right middle frontal cortex was greater when participants viewed their own rather than familiar faces, and this difference was larger after independent than after interdependent self-construal priming. The increased right frontal activity for participants ’ own faces relative to familiar faces was asso-ciated with faster responses. Our findings suggest that the neural correlates of self-awareness associated with recog-nition of one’s own face can be modulated by self-construal priming in human adults. The ability to recognize one’s mirror reflection indexes posses-sion of cognitive processes underlying self-awareness (Gallup, 1970; Keenan, Gallup, & Galk, 2003) and has been observed in chimpanzees (Gallup, 1970) and infants (Amsterdam, 1972). Human adults respond faster to their own face than to familiar faces, particularly when responding with the left hand (Keenan et al., 1999). The latter result suggests right-hemisphere dom-inance in self-face recognition. Damage to or anesthetization of the right hemisphere results in difficulties in self-face recog-nition (Breen, Caine, & Coltheart, 2001; Keenan, Nelson, & Pascual-Leone, 2001). Brain-imaging studies have found in-creased right frontal activity associated with recognition of one’