Brains creating stories of selves: the neural basis of autobiographical reasoning.

ABSTRACT: Personal identity critically depends on the creation of stories about the self and one's life. The present study investigates the neural substrates of autobiographical reasoning, a process central to the construction of such narratives. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, participants approached a set of personally significant memories in two different ways: in some trials, they remembered the concrete content of the events (autobiographical remembering), whereas in other trials they reflected on the broader meaning and implications of their memories (autobiographical reasoning). Relative to remembering, autobiographical reasoning recruited a left-lateralized network involved in conceptual processing [including the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), inferior frontal

SUBMITTER: D'Argembeau A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4014101 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature