Neural correlates of the self-concept in adolescence—A focus on the significance of friends

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• 作者：Lydia Romund ; Sabrina Golde ; Robert C. Lorenz ; Diana Raufelder ; Patricia Pelz ; Tobias Gleich ; Andreas Heinz and Anne Beck
• 刊名：Human Brain Mapping
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：38
• 期：2
• 页码：987-996
• 全文大小：263K
• ISSN：1097-0193

文摘

The formation of a coherent and unified self-concept represents a key developmental stage during adolescence. Imaging studies on self-referential processing in adolescents are rare, and it is not clear whether neural structures involved in self-reflection are also involved in reflections of familiar others. In the current study, 41 adolescents were asked to make judgments about trait adjectives during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): they had to indicate whether the word describes themselves, their friends, their teachers or politicians. Findings indicate a greater overlap in neural networks for responses to self- and friend-related judgments compared to teachers and politicians. In particular, classic self-reference structures such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and medial posterior parietal cortex also exhibited higher activation to judgments about friends. In contrast, brain responses towards judgments of teachers (familiar others) compared to politicians (unfamiliar others) did not significantly differ. Results support behavioral findings of a greater relevance of friends for the development of a self-concept during adolescence and indicate underlying functional brain processes. Hum Brain Mapp 38:987–996, 2017.