Abstract
Mirror self-recognition is a key feature of self-awareness. Do we recognize ourselves in the mirror because we remember how we look like, or because the available multisensory stimuli (eg, felt touch and vision of touch) suggest that the mirror reflection is me? Participants saw an unfamiliar face being touched synchronously or asynchronously with their own face, as if they were looking in the mirror. Following synchronous, but not asynchronous, stimulation, and when asked to judge the identity of morphed pictures of the two faces, participants assimilated features of the other's face in the mental representation of their own face. Importantly, the participants' autonomic system responded to a threatening object approaching the other's face, as one would anticipate a person to respond to her own face being threatened. Shared multisensory experiences between self and other can change representations of one's identity and the perceived similarity of others relative to one's self.
Highlights
Our face is the most distinctive feature of our physical appearance, and one of the key ways by which we become known as individuals, both to ourselves and to others
electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) recordings were individually inspected for possible artifacts, which did not result in data exclusion
heart rate deceleration (HRD) was calculated for each trial by subtracting the heart interbeat interval (IBI) concurrent with the moment when the object touched the other’s face (IBI 0) from the third IBI preceding this point of contact (IBI -3) [43]
Summary
Our face is the most distinctive feature of our physical appearance, and one of the key ways by which we become known as individuals, both to ourselves and to others. Accumulating evidence favors a right hemispheric specificity in frontoparietal areas responsible for self-face recognition [8]. This is supported by case studies of delusional misidentification syndrome, following right frontoparietal damage, whereby patients misidentify their own face in the mirror [9], and by recent fMRI studies of self-face recognition (for a review see [10]). Uddin et al [11] reported activations in the right inferior parietal lobule, inferior frontal gyrus and inferior occipital gyrus These regions were described as a unique network within the ‘‘mirror neuron system’’, responsible for detecting a match between an external stimulus and the self. We sought to further elucidate the underlying mechanisms and the effects of interpersonal multisensory stimulation (IMS) on the mental representation of the self and others
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