In Search of the Self: A Positron Emission Tomography Study

Previous work using positron emission tomography (PET) has shown that memory encoding processes are associated with preferential activation of left frontal regions of the brain, whereas retrieval processes are associated predominantly with right frontal activations. One possible reason for the asymm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 1999-01, Vol.10 (1), p.26-34
Main Authors: Craik, Fergus I. M., Moroz, Tara M., Moscovitch, Morris, Stuss, Donald T., Winocur, Gordon, Tulving, Endel, Kapur, Shitij
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjectives
Brain
Frontal lobe
Memory
Memory encoding
Memory recall
Personality traits
Positron emission tomography
Psychology
Self
Social research
Syllables
Tomography
Words
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Summary:Previous work using positron emission tomography (PET) has shown that memory encoding processes are associated with preferential activation of left frontal regions of the brain, whereas retrieval processes are associated predominantly with right frontal activations. One possible reason for the asymmetry is that episodic retrieval necessarily involves reference to the self, and the self-concept may be represented (at least partially) in right frontal regions. Accordingly, the present study investigated the possibility that encoding of self-related material might also activate right frontal areas. Eight right-handed volunteers judged trait adjectives under four separate PET scan conditions: (a) relevance to self, (b) relevance to a well-known public figure, (c) social desirability, and (d) number of syllables. The results showed that self-related encoding yielded left frontal activations similar to those associated with other types of semantic encoding, but also specific activations in the right frontal lobe. It is concluded that the concept of self involves both general schematic structures and further specific components involved in episodic memory retrieval.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/1467-9280.00102