A Neural Signature of the Bias Towards Self-Focus

People are remarkably self-focused, disproportionately choosing to think about themselves relative to other topics. Self-focus can be adaptive, helping individuals fulfill their needs. It can also be maladaptive, with self-focus a risk and maintenance factor for internalizing disorders like depression. Yet, the drive to focus on the self remains to be fully characterized. We discovered a brain pattern that when spontaneously brought online during a quick mental break predicts the desire to focus on oneself just a few seconds later. In Study 1 (19 female and 13 male human subjects), we identified a default network neural signature from pre-trial activity that predicts multiple indicators of self-focus within our sample. In Study 2 (588 female and 498 male human subjects), we applied our neural signature to independent resting-state data from the Human Connectome project. We found that individuals who score high on internalizing, a form of maladaptive self-focus, similarly move in-and-out of this pattern during rest, suggesting a systematic trajectory towards self-focused thought. This is the first work to “decode” the bias to focus on the self and paves the way towards stopping maladaptive self-focus in its course. Significance Statement Self-help aisles in bookstores, the popularity of self-care culture, curating social media identities, and rising depression and anxiety rates are all symptoms of modern life’s emphasis on the self. Why are people so preoccupied with themselves? We discovered self-focus emerges spontaneously because of the brain pattern people enter in the default network when they have a mental break. Participants’ default network patterns in the first few seconds of rest could decode if they next chose to focus on themselves, as well as subjective and neural markers of self-focus. Moreover, individuals prone to internalizing, a maladaptive form of self-focus, systematically moved in and out of this brain pattern during rest, perhaps shaping the timing of their spontaneous, self-focused thought.