SELF RECOGNITION AND THE BRAIN  [ back to What's New ]
Dr. Julian Keenan and colleagues at Harvard Medical School have established that the right cerebral hemisphere is activated when we see and recognize ourselves in a mirror or photo, whereas the left hemisphere is activated when we recognize another person. This was done by selectively anesthetizing different hemispheres of the brain and asking volunteers about to undergo epilepsy surgery to identify the person depicted in photos. Volunteers with an anesthetized left hemisphere could recognize only themselves. Those with an anesthetized right hemisphere could only recognize a celebrity but not themselves.