Social bodily self

Abstract

This chapter addresses a crucial aspect of social neuroscience by focusing on the pivotal role played by the social bodily self in the constitution of the experience of others. In the first section, we consider the core concept of self, the bodily self, and the current approaches that have attempted to define it. The multisensory integration of bodily-related signals is a key mechanism from which the bodily self originates, where the motor system plays a key role. Furthermore, we emphasize that along with exteroceptive processes, interoceptive signals arising from the body are also crucial to effectively build and maintain the bodily self, by taking into account two of its crucial components, i.e., the sense of body ownership (BO) and the spatial self, operationalized with the construct of peripersonal space (PPS). We show that the core sense of self is intrinsically related to other bodily selves, and hypothesize that from the beginning of our life, our basic experiences as bodily selves are guided by our interactions with other bodies, as supported by the mirror mechanisms. Thus, our core sense of self, together with its related components of BO and PPS, is a social bodily self. Finally, we address the alteration of the bodily self in psychopathology, focusing on schizophrenia and anorexia nervosa. We conclude by proposing that, given the relevance of the bodily self in social relationships, if the bodily self is compromised, so are its main components, leading to social dysfunctions. Overall, we posit that the social bodily self plays a fundamental role in the constitution of the other as another self.