ABSTRACT
What is the ego? Psychoanalysis suggests an intricate organization of the ego in terms of a topographic hierarchy. This chapter illustrates recent neuroscientific findings about the neural hierarchy of the subjective dimension of the ego, namely the self. Recent imaging data show that the self recruits different layers of regions, including interoceptive, exteroceptive, and mental/cognitive. Importantly, the brain regions mediating these layers resurface within each other such that their topography can be characterized by spatial nestedness (similar to the Russian dolls where the smaller doll is nested within the next larger one). Analogous observation can be made on the temporal side. The brain’s slower frequencies are intimately connected with its faster frequencies, showing long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs). Empirical findings show that higher degrees of LRTC are related to higher degrees of self-consciousness. The self can thus be characterized by temporal nestedness, which allows it to operate in a temporally continuous way across slow and fast timescales. Narcissism features abnormal focus on the own self. Recent findings demonstrate spatial imbalance among the three cortical layers of self and temporal shift towards slower frequencies in narcissism. This destabilizes spatial and temporal continuity of the self on both neural and psychological levels, resulting in a compensatory increase of one’s self-focus, that is, narcissism. In sum, we show an intricate brain-based spatial and temporal hierarchy in terms of nestedness of the self, which strongly shapes its topography and dynamic on both neural and psychological levels, such as in narcissism.
