ABSTRACT
The brain has been a topic of interest to humans all the way from ancient philosophers to modern-day scientists trying to figure out how and why the brain is the way it is, but more specifically the study of self-recognition. Self-recognition is a complex topic but one that answers many important questions about how humans, and even some nonhuman animals, brains’ process its own self versus the other stimuli and living organisms around it. One quote still used today by René Descartes (b. 1569), a French mathematician and one of the first neuroscientists who tried to localize the self, stated “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think; therefore, I am”). Through this statement, Descartes speculated that if the brain can recognize its own existence, the brain can, therefore, exist.
