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      Neural Responses to Heartbeats in the Default Network Encode the Self in Spontaneous Thoughts.

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          Abstract

          The default network (DN) has been consistently associated with self-related cognition, but also to bodily state monitoring and autonomic regulation. We hypothesized that these two seemingly disparate functional roles of the DN are functionally coupled, in line with theories proposing that selfhood is grounded in the neural monitoring of internal organs, such as the heart. We measured with magnetoencephalograhy neural responses evoked by heartbeats while human participants freely mind-wandered. When interrupted by a visual stimulus at random intervals, participants scored the self-relatedness of the interrupted thought. They evaluated their involvement as the first-person perspective subject or agent in the thought ("I"), and on another scale to what degree they were thinking about themselves ("Me"). During the interrupted thought, neural responses to heartbeats in two regions of the DN, the ventral precuneus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, covaried, respectively, with the "I" and the "Me" dimensions of the self, even at the single-trial level. No covariation between self-relatedness and peripheral autonomic measures (heart rate, heart rate variability, pupil diameter, electrodermal activity, respiration rate, and phase) or alpha power was observed. Our results reveal a direct link between selfhood and neural responses to heartbeats in the DN and thus directly support theories grounding selfhood in the neural monitoring of visceral inputs. More generally, the tight functional coupling between self-related processing and cardiac monitoring observed here implies that, even in the absence of measured changes in peripheral bodily measures, physiological and cognitive functions have to be considered jointly in the DN.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          J. Neurosci.
          The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
          Society for Neuroscience
          1529-2401
          0270-6474
          Jul 27 2016
          : 36
          : 30
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives (ENS-INSERM), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France.
          [2 ] Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives (ENS-INSERM), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France, Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, 60528 Frankfurt, Germany, and.
          [3 ] Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives (ENS-INSERM), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France, Centre de NeuroImagerie de Recherche CENIR, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6 UMR-S975, Inserm U975, CNRS UMR 7225, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, 75013 Paris, France catherine.tallon-baudry@ens.fr.
          Article
          36/30/7829
          10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0262-16.2016
          4961773
          27466329
          fe7c76aa-8275-4e2b-92b6-6c5e5250c775
          History

          default network,spontaneous cognition,self,heartbeat-evoked responses,MEG

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