ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the bridge between psychological theory and neuroscience research as they pertain to self. In neuroscience research, self is often used to encompass a broad range of processes that psychologists would refer to as self-reflection, self-knowledge, personality, emotion, and self-regulation. While laboratories and white coats might come to mind when thinking about scientific investigations, initial forays into understanding the neural basis of the self were more likely to be found in the company of explosions. Neuroimaging research on the self has mostly focused on neural regions that mediate encoding for social information; and motivational aspects of self-evaluation. One fruitful avenue for investigating the neural basis of self is to understand the role of self in executive processes. The development of neural models of self will only be possible as neural research draws more widely on theory and research conducted at the psychological level of analysis of the self.
