Who Am I: The Conscious and the Unconscious Self.

Michael Schaefer,Georg Northoff

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00126

Michael Schaefer, Georg Northoff

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00126

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Abstract

Who am I? What is the self and where does it come from? This may be one of the oldest problems in philosophy. Beyond traditional philosophy, only very recently approaches from neuroscience (in particular imaging studies) have tried to address these questions, too. So what are neural substrates of our self? An increasing body of evidence has demonstrated that a set of structures labeled as cortical midline structures are fundamental components to generate a conscious self. Moreover, recent theories on embodied cognition propose that this conscious self might be supplemented by additional structures, for example, in the somatosensory cortices, which enable our brain to create an “embodied mind”. While the self based on cortical midline structures may be related to a conscious self, we here propose that the embodied facet of the self may be linked to something we call unconscious self. In this article we describe problems of this model of a conscious and unconscious self and discuss possible solutions from a theoretical point of view.

Highlights

We know that even in prehistoric times humans tried to open the skulls of their sick conspecifics
In this article we suggest the idea that the processing of self-referential stimuli in cortical midline structures may represent an important part of the conscious self, which may be supplemented by an unconscious part of the self that has been called an ‘‘embodied mind’’ (Varela et al, 1991), which relies on other brain structures
In the previous section we argued that a set of brain structures labeled as cortical midlines structures (CMS) is an important part of a conscious self

Summary

Introduction

We know that even in prehistoric times humans tried to open the skulls of their sick conspecifics. In this article we suggest the idea that the processing of self-referential stimuli in cortical midline structures may represent an important part of the conscious self, which may be supplemented by an unconscious part of the self that has been called an ‘‘embodied mind’’ (Varela et al, 1991), which relies on other brain structures. In the previous section we argued that a set of brain structures labeled as CMS is an important part of a conscious self.

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