Bodily Consciousness Research Articles

Medically unexplained symptoms: a new model

Patients with chronic medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are frequently encountered in medical practice. Despite the distress, disability and resource utilization associated with MUS, these conditions remain poorly understood. This contribution describes a novel account of MUS that combines existing models in this area within a common explanatory framework based on cognitive psychological principles. According to the model, some MUS can be understood as distortions in bodily consciousness or control produced by the over-activation of symptom representations in memory. The primary goal of treatment is to minimize the repetitive re-allocation of attention onto symptoms that maintain this process.

Yawning: Unsuspected avenue for a better understanding of arousal and interoception

Almost all the vertebrates yawn, testifying the phylogenetic old origins of this behavior. Correlatively speaking, yawning shows an ontogenical precociousness since it occurs as early as 12 weeks after conception and remains relatively unchanged throughout life. Thus, it is contended that these common characteristics and their diencephalic origin allow to model an approach from which emerges a pivotal link between yawning and REM sleep. Yawning and stretching reverse the muscular atonia of the REM-sleep and reopen the collapsed airways. Yawning appears as a powerful muscular stretch, recruiting specific control systems particularly the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, the locus coeruleus and the reticular activating system from which the vigor of this ancestral vestige, surviving throughout evolution with little variation, may increase arousal. On the other hand, the James-Lange theory proposes that afferent feedback from muscles and viscera provides the brain with a feeling that characterizes the active motivational state and arousal. On this basis and using selected supporting findings from the literature and from data provided by daily life, it is contended that yawning takes part in interoceptiveness by its capacity to increase arousal and self-awareness. Adaptative behaviors depend on interactions among the nervous system and the body by a continuous feedback between them. The body's schema is a main component of the self, and interoceptive process is essential to awareness of the body and arousal. Yawning contributes to bodily consciousness as a behavior affiliating a sensory motor act and his perception from which pleasure is derived. Yawning can be seen as a proprioceptive performance awareness which inwardly provides a pre-reflective sense of one's body and a reappraisal of the body schema. The behavioral consequences of adopting specific regulatory strategies and the neural systems involved act upon attention and cognitive changes.Thus, it is proposed that yawning is a part of interoceptiveness by its capacity to increase arousal and self-awareness.

Le soi corporel

Numerous studies give a central role to the body in the constitution of the self. But a question remains: is the self the body (bodily self) or is the self in the body (embodied self)? The article aims to answer this question and thereby accounts for the nature of the self in relation to the body, by investigating bodily experience. Is bodily consciousness a form of self-consciousness immune to errors through misidentification or is bodily consciousness neutral in itself, and attributed to the self only in a second step? Answering this question implies to differentiate two types of bodily consciousness: consciousness of the body-object, relying on a process of identification, and consciousness of the body-subject. The latter does not imply any process of identification of the body and is thus immune to errors through misidentification. Even if immune, this form of bodily self-consciousness is not infallible. It can be replaced by an observational consciousness of the body, non immune, in different pathological and experimental conditions. Consciousness of the body-subject is specifically described as a non-intentional consciousness of the intentional body, that is, a consciousness of the body as it aims intentionally at the world and thereby a non-intentional consciousness of itself. The specificity of this pre-reflexive bodily self-consciousness gives supports to the conception of the self as bodily, by opposition with the conception of the self as embodied.

Book ReviewBiofeedback and Self-Control 1971: An Aldine Annual on the regulation of bodily processes and consciousness.

Book ReviewBiofeedback and Self-Control 1971: An Aldine Annual on the regulation of bodily processes and consciousness.