Martin Luther, at the time of the bubonic plague I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order to not become contaminated, and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. Then I will fumigate, purify the air, administer medicine, and take medicine. We conclude that the current pandemic shows the importance of the deeper intersubjective and cultural layers of both the self and brain their neglect can be life-threatening for the self and others and, paradoxically, might reduce, rather than enlarge, the self's sense of freedom and independence. This entails a two-stage model of self with neuro-social-ecological and psychological levels that extends the previously suggested basis model of self-specificity. Discussing various lines of empirical data showing the brain's intimate alignment to both social and ecological environmental contexts, our results support the assumption of the brain's deep layer features by laying bare a continuum of different degrees of neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment. Finally, we highlight the intersubjective and cultural nature of the self and its surface in the COVID-19 crisis. Second, we demonstrate cultural differences of Eastern and Western concepts of the self (i.e., independency and interdependency) and how these reflect the manifestation of the brain's neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment.

What does this pandemic crisis tell us about our self and relatedness, its cultural differences, and how these are rooted in the brain's relation to the world? First, we discuss the psychological and neuronal features of self and self–other relation and how they are rooted in a deeper layer of the brain's neural activity complementing its cognitive surface layer. This extends to the self–other relationship, as there is both being infected and infecting the other.

The COVID-19 crisis is affecting our sense of self and touches upon our existential fears.

Layers of fear explanation