In the following passages I want to provide a neuroscientific approach, an overview of the development of the social self-concept and its relation to the development of specific brain regions during adolescence. First, I will introduce the notion of (social) self-concept and how it is individually expressed during different developmental ontogenetic stages. Then I will refer to relevant brain regions and their general and social cognitive functions which are crucial related to the self-concept. The association between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the (social) self-concept is especially discussed. I will finish with a brief conclusion which also mentions possible related topics for future research.
Brain-related development of the social self-concept during adolescence: a neuroscientific approach
In the following passages I want to provide a neuroscientific approach, an overview of the development of the social self-concept and its relation to the development of specific brain regions during adolescence. First, I will introduce the notion of (social) self-concept and how it is individually expressed during different developmental ontogenetic stages. Then I will refer to relevant brain regions and their general and social cognitive functions which are crucial related to the self-concept. The association between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the (social) self-concept is especially discussed. I will finish with a brief conclusion which also mentions possible related topics for future research.
Self-concept as a dynamic ontogenetic construction
The self-concept can be formally defined by seven characteristics: organized, multifaceted, hierarchical, stable, developmental, evaluative, and differentiable (Shavelson et al., 1976). Shavelson and colleagues emphasize they do not identify the self-concept with an entity within a person (Shavelson et al., 1976). Of course, it is not necessary to notion the self as it were a mere (social-)constructivist concept without any reification because this point of view is based on contingent ontological presuppositions, which are therefore themselves not without alternatives. For instance, it is possible to use a notion of the self without to claim the self were merely constructed (by oneself, the society or both) in total and/or identical to (a) specific brain region(s). Hence in contrary, a different notion of the self could rather be focused on a realist than a constructivist ontology. However, a more fundamental philosophical investigation would be required to discuss this topic, for which this paper is not intended.
The material basis of the self-concept (i.e., one’s self-reflecting behaviour, cognitions, believes, evaluations etc.) depends on developmental stages during the ontogeny of an individual human being and therefore is associated with age (Harter & Leahy, 2001; Marsh & Ayotte, 2003). For instance, self-esteem is relatively high in childhood but decreases across the lifespan (Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005). Hence the own self-concept differs in concreto whether one is a child, an adolescent, or an adult. Accordingly, also contextual factors (i.e., social relations, school, or job environment etc.) are important, because one’s self-evaluations are domain-specific (Harter & Leahy, 2001). To give an example for developing self-evaluations using two focal developmental periods (Pfeifer et al., 2016): In the early childhood an individual may assert “I like myself”. This proposition is related to self-esteem as a global sense of self-worth, that means this is non-domain specific. In contrary, an individual during adolescence increasingly focuses on specific contexts, domains, and other individuals’ perspectives. Therefore, she might say: “Other kids at school think that I’m popular”. This proposition is related to reflected self-appraisals which refer to the specific context with other kids she has had in school. Hence self-evaluating (as a part of self-knowledge and therefore of the self-concept) develops across the lifespan from a merely egocentric perspective in the early childhood to a more elaborate reflected perspective which is intentionally focused on other individuals (their perspectives about oneself) and the environment (Pfeifer et al., 2016). To mention an alternative but even not contradictory distinction of the self to the former considered, William James distinguished between a physical, mental, and spiritual self (James, 1892). Neuroscience investigates similar concepts like these entitled proto-self, core, or mental self, and autobiographical or narrative self (Northoff et al., 2006).
Specific brain regions that are related to the self-concept and their general functions
Because one’s self-referred descriptions and evaluations require language and other higher cognitive functions, cortical structures are necessarily associated with the self-concept. But also, subcortical areas need to be mentioned because they provide affective, motivational, and evaluative tasks (for reasons of brain regions hierarchy), and therefore enable cortical-related conscious self-reflection (Ellis & Solms, 2018). The anterior medial prefrontal and medial posterior parietal cortex (in concreto: precuneus and posterior cingulate) are associated with self-reflecting (Kelley et al., 2002). The dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) are significant for general social cognitive tasks: i.e., to percept a person and mentalize (Saxe & Wexler, 2005). Furthermore, the TPJ may be necessary for perspective-taking and therefore theory of mind (Saxe & Powell, 2006; Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003). The posterior superior temporal sulcus integrates sensory information for the relevant social domains and provides it to other brain regions (Northoff et al., 2006). The hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) are important for working memory and episodic memory storage (Burgess et al., 2002; Levy & Goldman-Rakic, 2000). For affective associations and emotional learning, the amygdala (Davis & Whalen, 2001; Everitt et al., 1991) and nucleus accumbens (Basar et al., 2010; McCullough et al., 1993) are relevant subcortical structures. But also, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is associated with affect and motivation, because of its function to evaluate (present) stimuli (Harris et al., 2011; Pfeifer & Berkman, 2018). In the following passages I will not attend to the development of all these brain regions and their correlation to the self-concept in detail, but I will focus on the cortical structures, especially the mPFC, which are important for the ontogeny of the social self-concept during adolescence: the period of life, that begins with puberty and ends when one persistently commits to an adult role (Lerner et al., 2015).
Development of the social self-concept during adolescence and associated brain regions
During adolescence individuals take on new social roles because of rapid changes in their environment and peer relationships which lead to changes in their self-concepts (Brown, 2004; Sebastian et al., 2008). It was proposed that these changes in adolescents’ self-concepts were correlated with their brain development (Giedd et al., 1999; Gogtay et al., 2004). As Ellis and Solms (2018) pointed out in a more general developmental sense, such ontogenetic changes of cognitive functions (i.e., self-reflecting, acting as oneself etc.) and their related brain regions are not caused unidirectional but rather bidirectional: Changes in structures and hence also functions of brain regions occur during one’s ontogeny and lead to changes in one’s behaviour, mental states, self-concept etc. – and these changes retrospectively cause further changes in the biological and physiological brain development, which result in more adaptive behaviour of the individual in its social environment (Ellis & Solms, 2018).
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have shown (Giedd et al., 1999) there is an increase of white matter in adolescence (and in contrary a decrease of grey matter from childhood to adolescence), especially in cortical areas like the PFC, temporal and parietal cortex, because of continued axonal myelination and synaptic pruning from childhood to adulthood (Paus, 2005). Functional MRI (fMRI) studies showed a decrease in prefrontal activity, especially in the mPFC, between early adolescence and adulthood but an increase of temporal cortex activity (Blakemore et al., 2007). This decrease might be the case because of continued synaptic pruning and axonal myelination in the mPFC, so the local neuronal circuits are more efficient and therefore less activity is required to perform self-referential tasks adequately (Durston et al., 2006). Although the mPFC is one of the latest developing regions during adolescence (Shaw et al., 2008), its processing is crucial for self-referential thoughts and descriptions (dmPFC), perspective taking and judgment making (vmPFC) (D'Argembeau et al., 2007; Macrae et al., 2004). Pfeifer et al. showed differing activation in mPFC and lateral temporal cortex of young adolescents (mean age 10 years) and adults (mean age 26 years) either they judged self-conditioned (e.g., “I like to read just for fun.”) or social-conditioned descriptions about the fictional person Harry Potter (Pfeifer et al., 2007). During self- than social-conditioned assertions the mPFC was relatively more activated in both young adolescents and adults. But in comparison to the self-knowledge condition, only the mPFC activity of young adolescents was significantly over the baseline. Adults may use more stored self-knowledge to perform the tasks, that is related to semantic memory retrieval and its underlying lateral temporal cortex activity, while adolescents rely more on self-reflecting processing (Pfeifer et al., 2007). At least this suggests the mPFC may rather be more important for self-referred than social-referred knowledge and moreover that adults differ from adolescents in self-judging, both in the intensively involved brain regions and cognitive retrieval of self-referential descriptions. Furthermore, the dmPFC is more activated in adolescents than in adults when they think about their intentions compared to physical causality judgments (Blakemore et al., 2007). Also, there is evidence for domain-specific neural activity (in dlPFC and mPFC) for evaluating traits (in academic and physical domains), which underlines the relevance of domain distinctions when studying the development of the self and its related brain regions (van der Cruijsen et al., 2018).
Perspective-taking (i.e., to transcend one’s own point of view and take that of the other as if it were one’s own) is another very important social cognitive function to implement more information into one’s social self-concept (Sebastian et al., 2008). In a study 112 participants – Children, adolescents, and adults; aged 8–36 years – were instructed to imagine either what they (first-person view) or another person (third-person view) would feel in different emotional scenarios (Choudhury et al., 2006). As a result, the difference in measured reaction time between the first-person and third-person view decreased with age. According to the authors, this suggests an increase of perspective taking efficiency with age, and adolescence is the particular period of brain maturation and psychosocial development where this improvement occurs (Choudhury et al., 2006). The neural foundation for this social cognition is the PFC and TPJ (Burnett et al., 2009; Sebastian et al., 2008). Burnett et al. (2009) instructed participants (19 adolescents: 10–18 years; 10 adults: 22–32 years) to read scenarios that either included social emotions (e.g., embarrassment, guilt) or basic emotions (e.g., fear, disgust) and then asked them to imagine that these scenarios had happened either to themselves (self-condition) or to someone else (other-condition). In both adolescents and adults, the anterior rostral mPFC was more activated during social than basic emotions. Furthermore, adolescents but not adults showed higher activity in their lateral mPFC, while the TPJ was activated in adults’ but not in adolescents’ brains for social versus basic emotions. These results indicate that the attribution of social and basic emotions develop with age and is associated with different neural activation patterns. It was interpreted that adolescents’ imagining of emotional response of other persons is more simulation-based than of adults. So, adults maybe mentalize social emotions either less or more automatically than adolescents do (Burnett et al., 2009).
Conclusion
Overall, these results suggest that adolescence is an important period for an individual in terms of integrating her self-concept in a wider and social context. The social cognitive capacities required for this are closely associated with the development of specific cortical brain regions. Especially the (medial) prefrontal cortex plays a key role for self-related judgment, domain-specific self-evaluation, perspective taking and in the case of attributing social emotions to oneself. Possible topics for future research could be (1) the influence of the concrete environmental contexts in terms of the self-concept development and its neural correlates; (2) the potential genetic and gender differences affecting the development of one’s self-concept; and (3), a more clinical topic, the relation between the increased incidence of anxiety and affective disorders and the developing self-concept during the period of adolescence (Sebastian et al., 2008).
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- Citation du texte
- Anonyme,, 2021, Brain-Related Development of the Social Self-Concept during Adolescence. A Neuroscientific Approach, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1337437
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