Human Self-consciousness Research Articles

Mind Reading: Neural Mechanisms of Theory of Mind and Self-Perspective

Human self-consciousness as the metarepresentation of ones own mental states and the so-called theory of mind (TOM) capacity, which requires the ability to model the mental states of others, are closely related higher cognitive functions. We address here the issue of whether taking the self-perspective (SELF) or modeling the mind of someone else (TOM) employ the same or differential neural mechanisms. A TOM paradigm was used and extended to include stimulus material that involved TOM and SELF capacities in a two-way factorial design. A behavioral study in 42 healthy volunteers showed that TOM and SELF induced differential states of mind: subjects assigned correctly first or third person pronouns when providing responses to the stimuli. Following the behavioral study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in eight healthy, right-handed males to study the common and differential neural mechanisms underlying TOM and SELF. The main factor TOM led to increased neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and left temporopolar cortex. The main factor SELF led to increased neural activity in the right temporoparietal junction and in the anterior cingulate cortex. A significant interaction of both factors TOM and SELF was observed in the right prefrontal cortex. These divergent neural activations in response to TOM and SELF suggest that these important differential mental capacities of human self-consciousness are implemented at least in part in distinct brain regions.

FMRI and pet activation during performance of the ‘tower of london’ task

Reviews [Frith, U., Frith, C.D., 2003. Development and neurophysiology of mentalising. Philos. Trans. R. Soc., B 358, 685–694.] of several imaging studies report robust involvement of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in “theory of mind” (ToM) tasks. Surprisingly, this activation is notably absent when judging another person's visual perspective [Vogeley, K., May, M., Ritzl, A., Falkai, P., Zilles, K., Fink, G.R., 2004. Neural correlates of first-person perspective as one constituent of human self-consciousness. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 16, 817–827.]. The objective of our study was to see whether this activation can be recovered when the difference between what observers see is clearly one of perspectives (in front vs. behind) and not potentially a difference in what observers are looking at. Despite this change, there was still no apparent activation of MPFC. We did find activation in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) recently emphasized as centrally involved in processing false belief stories [Saxe, R., Kanwisher, N., 2003. People thinking about thinking people: The role of the temporo-parietal junction in “theory of mind”. NeuroImage 19, 1835–1842.], which also create a stark contrast of perspectives. By integrating extant neurophysiological evidence on theory of mind processing, we suggest that the dorsal part of the TPJ region is responsible for representing perspective differences and making behavioral predictions, while the more ventral part of TPJ and the MPFC region is responsible for predicting behavioral consequences and the MPFC also emotional consequences of mental states.

P-5-606 - Hemangiopericytoma of brain in children after head trauma: Report of two cases

The senses of owning a body and being localized somewhere in space are two key components of human self-consciousness. Despite a wealth of neurophysiological and neuroimaging research on the representations of the spatial environment in the parietal and medial temporal cortices, the relationship between body ownership and self-location remains unexplored. To investigate this relationship, we used a multisensory out-of-body illusion to manipulate healthy participants’ perceived self-location, head direction, and sense of body ownership during high-resolution fMRI. Activity patterns in the hippocampus and the posterior cingulate, retrosplenial, and intraparietal cortices reflected the sense of self-location, whereas the sense of body ownership was associated with premotor-intraparietal activity. The functional interplay between these two sets of areas was mediated by the posterior cingulate cortex. These results extend our understanding of the role of the posterior parietal and medial temporal cortices in spatial cognition by demonstrating that these areas not only are important for ecological behaviors, such as navigation and perspective taking, but also support the perceptual representation of the bodily self in space. Our results further suggest that the posterior cingulate cortex has a key role in integrating the neural representations of self-location and body ownership.

E. P. Thompson's Quarrel with Post-1880 Marxism; Correspondence

This is just a brief addition to J. Quinn Brisben's admirable review of the last book by E.P. Thompson, my favorite historian (after Karl Marx) about my favorite poet (after none), William Blake (MR, September 1994). I wish to suggest that Thompson's most valuable concept, central to his vision, the history-making reality of human desire and moral self-consciousness, lies outside the tradition, not of Marx, but of post-1880 Marxism and calls out for its revision.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Schleiermacher Contra Lindbeck on the Status of Doctrinal Sentences

Lindbeck has devised what he calls a ‘regulative theory’ of doctrinal sentences, which he considers to be superior to its main rivals ‘propositionalism’ and ‘experiential-expressivism’. For Lindbeck, Schleiermacher is the classical expressivist. I argue that Schleiermacher is more properly classified as a propositionalist, though he does have expressivist inclinations. According to Schleiermacher, doctrinal sentences express propositions about God, the world, and human self-consciousness, and they can be the objects of cognitive states. At the same time, there is a sense in which they ‘express’ pious self-consciousness. I also argue that Schleiermacher's account of doctrinal sentences is superior to Lindbeck's, because it provides a better basis for understanding ecumenical dialogue.

Consciousness and psychotherapy

The origins and resistance to change of neurotic procedures are considered with particular reference to the nature and role of consciousness. It is argued that the traditional opposition between conscious and unconscious systems provides an unsatisfactory model. The crucial role of language in the formation of human self-consciousness is emphasized. The restricted procedural repertoire of neurotic subjects, and their deficient self-consciousness, can be attributed to a number of factors. It is argued that the main use of consciousness in therapy should be to heighten the patient's awareness of his or her damaging or restricting procedural repertoire through the process of reformulation, which allows recognition, and in due course revision to be achieved.

Las máscaras del sí mismo

The Masks of the self. The rising of human self-consciousness is developed in six steps: 1) Looking at the face; 2) Visible and audible masks; 3) Tattoos and acting; 4) The mask of the 'Proto-agonist'; 5) The mirror of Narcissus; 6) Feelings speculations. Eros and Psyche.

Handedness and the Self: Poe's Chess Player

close reader of Poe's detective stories soon discovers that .real mystery in these tales turns not so much upon startling identity of killer in Rue Morgue or actual cause of Marie Roget's death or manner in which purloined letter is concealed by Minister D_________ (all of which are soluble), as upon analytic power itself, that mysterious mental ability to solve a mystety. Starting with narrator's opening argument in first Dupin story that the mental features discoursed of as analytical are, in them- selves, but little susceptible of analysis,1 Poe expands his analysis of analytic power over course of three tales to include mysteries of mind-body relationship and structure of self. In making nature of human self-consciousness real object of investigation in Dupin stories, Poe is simply continuing and refining a thematic concern that had been present from beginning of his career as a prose writer. Indeed, some five years before publishing first Dupin story, The Murders in Rue Morgue, Poe made what is perhaps his most explicit examination of criteria of mental activity in an 1836 essay entitled Maelzel's Chess Player. In essay Poe presents a lengthy analysis of chess-playing au- tomaton invented by Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1 769 and exhi- bited during 1820s and '30s in United States by Johann Maelzel, an inventor of musical automata and a one time friend and business partner of Beethoven. Poe's analysis—which critics frequently point to as a prefiguration of analytic method of three Dupin stories—is

Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805-1841

Preface Introduction Part I. Philosophy and Cultural Integration: Hegel in Context: 1. The origins of the Hegelian project: tensions in the father's world 2. Revolution and Romanticism: the generational context of Hegel's ideology of cultural integration 3. The reconciliation of Reason and reality: Hegel's differentiation from Romanticism Part II. The Historical Appropriation of the Absolute: Unity and Diversity in the Hegelian School, 1805-1831: 4. Hegel and Hegelianism: disciples and sympathisers in the formation of the Hegelian school 5. Hegelian politics during the Restoration: accommodation, critique, and historical transcendence 6. Christian religion and Hegelian philosophy during the Restoration: accommodation, critique, and historical transcendence Part III. The Reduction of the Absolute to 'Man': The Division of the School and the Emergence of the Hegelian Left, 1830-1841: 7. Right, centre, and left: the division of the Hegelian school in the 1830s 8. Strauss and the principle of immanence 9. Bruno Bauer and the reduction of absolute spirit to human self-consciousness 10. Feuerbach and the reduction of absolute spirit to human 'species being' Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index.

MacLeish and the Fortunate Fall

ARCHIBALD MACLEISH first treated the myth of the lost Paradise it, in the verse play Nobodaddy, which appeared in 1926. Though the fact that it was never reprinted argues that he came to consider this play unsatisfactory either in idea or in technique, it is a revealing expression of his mood in the mid-twenties, serving in particular as a companion piece to The Pot of Earth, written in the same period, in which he uses the pagan myth of the dying and resurrected fertility god to question the meaning of a girl's life absorbed and snuffed out in service to survival of the race. In the Foreword to Nobodaddy MacLeish says that he is using the myth not as metaphor but solely as a dramatic presentation of the plight of human consciousness in an indifferent universe, without anthropological implications.' It is hard, however, to see how this use differs from metaphor, or from the reinterpretation of myth widely practiced from time immemorial. At all events, Nobodaddy, though not to be taken as identical with Yahweh, is here the nature god, aloof and incomprehensible, the Fall is alienation from him through aroused human self-consciousness (as in Songs for Eve twenty-eight years later, Eve is not Eve until she has eaten the apple), and the rebellion of Cain is the assertion of human integrity against the amoral nature worship of Abel. Though these ideas are echoed in various guises throughout his career, MacLeish did not again use the myth of the lost Paradise until the fifties, when it became implicit in This Music Crept by Me upon the Waters (I953) and explicit in Songs for Eve (954). In This Music the Earthly Paradise is an island in the Antilles, where the winds of time and change are stilled and the innocent moon is supernaturally haunting and beautiful. The primitive Indians could live here, with reefs and sharks as angels at the