Task-induced internal bodily rather than brain states regulate human self-perception

Abstract

A fundamental ability for us is to identify and distinguish with others, known as the self, whose neural substrate is hard to identify by external self-related stimuli because of possible interference from internal self-related states of both body and brain. Using the same stimuli, we ruled out this dilemma by manipulating human subjects performing own- and celebrity-face discrimination tasks to induce self-related and non-self-related states, respectively. Results showed that stimulus-driven sensory sensory differences among own-, celebrity-, and stranger-faces were independent of task-induced internal states, whereas their perceptual differences were strongly modulated by these states. Intriguingly, we further found that subjects bodily (indexed by heartbeat-evoked potentials) rather than brain (indexed by pre-stimulus -powers) states not only predicated their self-perception but also moderated the relationship between external stimuli and self-perception. Our results reveal for the first time an adaptive self-perception, shaped by not only external stimuli but also internal states, especially the interoception.