title: I think therefore I am: Rest-related prefrontal cortex neural activity is involved in generating the sense of self.
abstract: The sense of self has always been a major focus in the psychophysical debate. It has been argued that this complex ongoing internal sense cannot be explained by any physical measure and therefore substantiates a mind-body differentiation. Recently, however, neuro-imaging studies have associated self-referential spontaneous thought, a core-element of the ongoing sense of self, with synchronous neural activations during rest in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), as well as the medial and lateral parietal cortices. By applying deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over human PFC before rest, we disrupted activity in this neural circuitry thereby inducing reports of lowered self-awareness and strong feelings of dissociation. This effect was not found with standard or sham TMS, or when stimulation was followed by a task instead of rest. These findings demonstrate for the first time a critical, causal role of intact rest-related PFC activity patterns in enabling integrated, enduring, self-referential mental processing.
authors.affiliation: The Emotion-Cognition Research Center, Shalvata Mental Health Center, P.O. Box 94, Hod-Hasharon 45100, Israel; Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann St., Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel; Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: michal.gruberger@gmail.com.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gruberger
authors.affiliation: The Emotion-Cognition Research Center, Shalvata Mental Health Center, P.O. Box 94, Hod-Hasharon 45100, Israel; Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: levkovit@netvision.net.il.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Levkovitz
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann St., Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel; Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel; Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: hendlert@gmail.com.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hendler
authors.affiliation: The Emotion-Cognition Research Center, Shalvata Mental Health Center, P.O. Box 94, Hod-Hasharon 45100, Israel; Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann St., Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel. Electronic address: evharel@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: E V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Harel
authors.affiliation: The Emotion-Cognition Research Center, Shalvata Mental Health Center, P.O. Box 94, Hod-Hasharon 45100, Israel. Electronic address: rreh@clalit.org.il.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Harari
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann St., Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel; Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: etoosh@gmail.com.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ben Simon
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, 6, Weizmann St., Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel; Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: haggaisharon@gmail.com.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sharon
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheba 84105, Israel. Electronic address: azangen@bgu.ac.il.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zangen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Consciousness; Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation; Default-mode network; Dissociation; H-coil; Prefrontal cortex; Rest; Self; Self-awareness; Transcranial magnetic stimulation