Paper Info
Title
Neural oscillations involved in self-referential processing.
Abstract
Human adults remember better trait words that are referenced to the self than those referenced to others. To investigate whether non-phase-locked neural oscillations engage in the self-reference effect, we recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) from healthy adults during trait judgments of the self and a familiar other. The wavelet analysis was used to calculate non-phase-locked time–frequency power associated with encoding of trait adjectives referenced to the self or the familiar other at theta (5–7Hz), alpha (8–13Hz), beta (14–27Hz) and gamma (28–40Hz) bands. We found that, relative to other-referential traits, self-referential traits induced event-related synchronization of theta-band activity over the frontal area at 700–800ms and of alpha-band activity over the central area at 400–600ms. In contrast, event-related desynchronization associated with self-referential traits was observed in beta-band activity over the central–parietal area at 700–800ms and in gamma-band activity over the fronto-central area at 500–600ms. Moreover, valence of traits referenced to the self and self-relevance of traits respectively led to modulations of theta/alpha- and beta/gamma-band activity. Finally, event-related synchronization of frontal theta-band activity at 700–800ms positively correlated with the self-reference effect observed during memory retrieval. Our results indicate that non-phase-locked neural activity is involved in self-reflexive thinking. In addition, low and high-frequency neural oscillations play different roles in emotional and cognitive aspects of self-reference processing.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.008
NeuroImage
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Self-reference effect,Neural oscillation,Theta,Alpha,Beta,Gamma
Journal
53
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1053-8119
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.39
8
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yan Mu120.73
Shihui Han213218.96