Recently,cognitive neuroscience focuses on those functions that allow us to represent the self and to communicate with others during social interaction.This leads to the recent emergence of social cognitive neuroscience.Our recent brain imaging studies observed that self-representation at multiple levels is mediated by distinct neural substrates.In addition,the neural substrates underlying self-representation are strongly shaped by the respective environmental context and are thus prone to transcultural differences that distinguish Chinese from Westerners and Christians from non-religious people.I will present some of our recent brain imaging results and discuss the implications of these findings.