The Self in Neuroscience and Psychiatry
January 1, 2026 Femi Oyebode
The concept of the self is not fixed but evolves across philosophical accounts by John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Derek Parfit. Karl Jaspers contributed formal characteristics of the self derived from clinical encounters, providing a framework for discussing abnormal psychiatric phenomena. Neuroscience has advanced to show that the self is not localized to a single brain region (no homunculus); instead, the default mode network, a distributed and dynamic network of structures, is most active when the mind is at rest and not focused on external tasks. This network supports self-referential thinking, mind-wandering, autobiographical memory, social cognition, moral reasoning, and imagining the future.