The Self: A Neurophilosophical Investigation
- Meghna Solanki
- Oct 14
- 6 min read
What is the “I” we experience every day? Is it a soul, a story, or a brain-based construct? This article reviews key ideas from philosophy and neuroscience to explore how the self has been understood - from classical theories of the soul to modern brain-based models - and what it means for identity, consciousness, and human experience.
Is the “I” in your head just a story your brain tells itself?
Every morning you wake up as “you.” You remember your name. You feel a body. You recall your past. But what is this sense of self, really? Is it a soul, a story, or a structure of neurones? Enter neurophilosophy - a collaboration between neuroscience and philosophy that’s turning this ancient question into a modern science.
Who Are You?
From spiritual gurus to cognitive neuroscientists, everyone has an answer to this question. But neurophilosophy offers a radical, evidence-backed idea:
The self is not a fixed entity but a neural process, continuously constructed by the brain. The self may not be a thing at all, but a dynamic process your brain constructs - a kind of controlled illusion. This view challenges everything from personal identity to morality and free will. In this blog, we will explore how neuroscience is rewriting the story of the “self.”
🧩 The Classical Self: A Soul or a Substance?
In Western thought, the self began as something eternal: a soul (Plato, Descartes). In Eastern traditions, the idea of a fixed or permanent self was already questioned (Buddhism’s anatta doctrine denied a permanent self).
Historically, the self was thought of as:
A soul (Plato, Descartes)
A thinking substance that underlies all experience
The essential "I" that persists over time
But these models assumed the self was non-physical, mysterious, and indivisible.
🔬 The Modern Brain-Based Self
How has neuroscience changed our perception? Through neuroimaging studies - which utilised tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and lesion studies - we now know that:
The brain actively constructs the self.
No single “self-region” exists. Instead, it is distributed across networks, integrating various neural networks that combine sensory and motor experiences.
🧠 The key brain areas involved in self-representation are:
Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) – self-referential thinking
Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC) – autobiographical memory
Insula – bodily awareness (interoception)
Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ) – perspective-taking, social self
A 2013 study by Northoff et al. found the Default Mode Network (DMN) activates consistently when people think about themselves. These brain areas light up when we remember our past, imagine our future, and reflect on emotions or identity. But here’s the twist: they don’t activate because a “self” is doing the thinking. They activate to create the experience of a self.
🧠 The Self as a Model, Not a Thing
German philosopher and neuroscientist Thomas Metzinger argues:
“There is no such thing as a self - there is only a self-model, constructed by the brain.”
In his book Being No One (2003), he explained that consciousness involves an internal phenomenal self-model (PSM), which:
Feels real
Is centred around “ownership” of thoughts and body
Can break down in mental illness (e.g., depersonalisation)
This model includes: Your body map, Your autobiographical memory, Your social identity and Your inner narrative voice. The self, it turns out, is vulnerable, changeable, and deeply embodied.
Supporting Evidence:
Out-of-body experiences, studied by Olaf Blanke and colleagues, can be triggered by stimulating the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), leading people to feel as though they are ‘outside’ their body.
People with depersonalisation disorder report feeling detached from themselves. Brain scans show heightened activity in the DMN during these episodes.
🪞 The Multiplicity of the Self
Modern neuroscience supports the idea that the self is not singular: Far from being one unified thing, the self may be a collection of loosely coordinated systems.
Multiple "selves" proposed in the literature:
These selves can get “out of sync”. Have you ever felt as though you have lost sight of yourself? That might have been your narrative self unravelling. Ever felt ashamed in public? That’s your social self under fire.
This leads to the "who am I?" crisis. where an individual may not feel like their outer self reflects their inner self construct or narrative. This may lead to anxiety or depression because it feels like there is a mismatch. How we present ourselves to others, who we aspire to be, and the social and cultural pressures we face often force us into versions of ourselves that don’t fully reflect our true persona. This view aligns with findings from split-brain research, dissociative disorders, and meditation studies, which all show that the “self” is a fluid, multifaceted process.
In short, you are not one self - you are many, working in parallel like threads in a tapestry.
🤯 What Happens When the Self Breaks?
Brain damage and mental illness can reveal just how fragile and constructed the “self” really is. Each case points to a modular, fallible self, not a permanent soul:
Split-brain patients (Gazzaniga, 1967): When the brain’s two hemispheres are disconnected, two “selves” seem to emerge because two distinct fields of consciousness have been created.
Anosognosia: Stroke patients, and patients with other conditions such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia may deny their impairments - unaware of their own physical or mental disorders or disabilities - suggesting a broken self-model.
Schizophrenia: Patients report auditory hallucinations as coming from "others", not themselves, which is linked to faulty source monitoring in the brain. Source monitoring is a cognitive process where the brain cannot distinguish between internally generated thoughts and externally perceived stimuli. This fits with abnormal activity in the DMN, disrupted temporal lobe, and auditory cortex neural networks, which cause inner speech to be perceived as external voices.
🧘♀️ Self and Meditation: Quieting the Narrative
Meditation is a mental practice that involves training attention and awareness to achieve better focus, emotional balance, and insight to the mind and self. When practiced effectively, meditation restructures brain networks, reduces DMN activity, and alters wave activity, thereby leading to decreased self rumination, while strengthening prefrontal and insula connectivity. This improves the regulation of emotions and interoceptive awareness. It also increases alpha and theta waves and synchronises gamma activity which leads to a more flexible sense of self - these waves lead to relaxation and heightened awareness, respectively.
In one fMRI study, long-term meditators showed less activation in self-referential brain regions, correlating with reports of “ego dissolution”. This supports the idea that the self is a construct - one we can tune, change, or even quiet.
Why not have a go at meditating yourself?: 5-Minute Meditation You Can Do Anywhere | Goodful
🔍 So… What Are You?
Neurophilosophy doesn’t deny your subjective experience, it states that:
You are a process, not a thing - a narrative constructed by brain systems.
The self is a dynamic pattern of brain activity - a model built from sensory input and memory.
The self is a story told by neurones - a useful fiction that helps coordinate thought and behaviour.
This doesn’t make you ‘unreal’. It just means that the “self” is more like a song than a sculpture - a dynamic pattern, not a solid structure.
💡 Why It Matters
Understanding the self as a brain-constructed model has deep implications:
Mental Health: Understanding the self as fluid helps treat disorders like identity disturbance and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Law & Ethics: If the self is a construct, can we hold people accountable in the same way that we currently do?
AI and Consciousness: If selfhood is just modelling, could AI eventually “have a self”?
Spirituality: You don’t need a soul to feel sacred, just a brain to be aware of itself.
🧭 Final Thoughts
“You” are not a soul trapped in a body. You are a body generating a story. And the story keeps changing. This insight, grounded in both neuroscience and deep philosophy, may be the most freeing idea of all. And once you are aware of it, everything becomes more flexible: identity, morality, suffering, and even freedom.
📚 Further Reading
Northoff G. Brain and self - a neurophilosophical account. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health. 2013 Jul 31;7(1):28. doi: 10.1186/1753-2000-7-28. PMID: 23902725; PMCID: PMC3734106.
Bünning S, Blanke O. The out-of body experience: precipitating factors and neural correlates. Prog Brain Res. 2005;150:331-50. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50024-4. PMID: 16186034.
Murphy RJ. Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder and Neural Correlates of Trauma-related Pathology: A Critical Review. Innov Clin Neurosci. 2023 Jan-Mar;20(1-3):53-59. PMID: 37122581; PMCID: PMC10132272.
LeDoux JE, Gazzaniga MS. The brain and the split brain: A duel with duality as a model of mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1981;4(1):109-110. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00007871
Alexandra Daniela Zaugg. (2006) Channelspecific Consumer Complaint Behaviour: The Case of Online Complaining. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Michael Garrett, Raul Silva, Auditory Hallucinations, Source Monitoring, and the Belief That “Voices” Are Real, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 445–457, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.schbul.a007018
Zhang, Z., Luh, WM., Duan, W. et al. Longitudinal effects of meditation on brain resting-state functional connectivity. Sci Rep 11, 11361 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90729-y
Metzinger, T., 2003. Being no one. (Microsoft PowerPoint - 20812E43.ppt)
Brewer et al. (2011). Meditation and the self. PMC3004979
This interview was conducted by Meghna Solanki and edited by Rebecca Pope, with graphics produced by Eve Cottenden. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.
Comments