The Neural Representation of Self and Neurofeedback and Its Application to the Evaluation Efficacy for Smoking Cessation

摘要

A recent synthesis of neuroimaging results identified two dorsal midline areas as candidates for the neural representation of self; one area is in the medial prefrontal cortex and the other in the precuneus. Each area is at the center of a cluster of areas identified in Theory of Mind tasks, which in turn, is surrounded by areas of the default mode network. A new framework is proposed for the way these areas fit the large network organization of the brain which leads to two important unifications. First the same neural networks are seen to handle attention and memory during awake state and sleep, but fulfilling different and complementary roles in each case. Second, the apparent diverse effects of neurofeedback are seen as consequences of stabilizing the midline neural representation of self. Finally, an operational way of applying the new framework is proposed and early results are presented in the context of evaluating neurofeedback interventions for smoking cessation.