Neural basis of self
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The neural basis of self is the idea of using modern concepts of
neurobiology
.
Experimental techniques
In order to understand how the human
fMRI data is often used to determine activation levels in portions of the brain. fMRI measures blood flow in the brain. Areas with higher blood flow as shown on fMRI scans are said to be activated. This is due to the assumption that portions of the brain receiving increased blood flow are being used more heavily during the moment of scanning.[1]
Positron emission tomography is another method used to study brain activity.[2]
Self-awareness
Anatomy
Two areas of the
medial prefrontal cortex and the medial posterior parietal cortex.[3]
The medial prefrontal cortex are thought to combine to provide humans with the ability to self-reflect. The insular cortex is also thought to be involved in the process of self-reference.[4]
Embodiment
The sense of embodiment is critical to a person's conception of
experiences impact human's overall perception. This idea somewhat challenges previous ideas of human cognition because it challenges the idea of the human mind being innate.[6]
There are two portions of the
body position (whether he or she is sitting or laying face up) affects how the extrastriate body area is activated. The temporoparietal junction, however, is not affected by a person's particular body position. The temporoparietal junction deals with disembodied rather than embodied self-location, explaining why a person's physical position does not affect its activation. Self-location as related to a person's sense of embodiment is related to his or her actual location in space.[5]
Autobiographical memories
The
memories form the way people feel about themselves. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex are involved in the memory of autobiographical information.[7]
Morality
medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are activated when people feel guilt, compassion, or embarrassment. Guilt and passion activate the mesolimbic pathway, and indignation and disgust are activated by the amygdala. There is clearly a network involved with the ideas of morality.[8]
Views of self
In order to explain how a human views themself, two different conceptual views of self-perception exist: the individualist and collectivistic views of
personality traits that are permanent descriptions unrelated to particular situations. The collectivistic view of self, however, involves people's perception of themselves as members of a group or in a particular situation. The view people have of themselves in a collectivistic sense is entirely dependent on the situation they are in and the group with which they are interacting. These two ideas of self are also called self-construal styles.[9]
There is neurobiological evidence supporting these two definitions of self-construal styles. fMRI activation in the medial prefrontal cortex than those who view themselves individualistically. The reverse is true when people describe themselves individualistically.[9]
Impaired views of self
The study of the human mind in diseased states provides valuable insight into how the mind works in healthy individuals. A multitude of diseases are studied to understand altered perceptions of self and what causes these impairments.
Autism
self-recognition tasks, the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule in the right hemisphere are activated. Children who do not have autism show activation in these areas when performing face processing tasks for their own faces and those of others. Children with autism, however, only show activation in these areas when recognizing their own faces. The activation in the inferior frontal gyrus is less in children with autism than in those who do not have autism.[11]
Schizophrenia
The cortical midline structure is extremely important in the understanding of the self, especially during the task of self-reflection. Many researchers believe that self-reference plays a role in the expression of
psychoses and those who do not can aid in diagnoses and treatment of those diseases. Those who are prone to psychoses such as schizophrenia, when describing positive traits about themselves show increased activation in the left insula, right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and left ventromedial prefrontal cortex. When they use negative traits to describe themselves, those who are prone to psychoses show higher activation in the bilateral insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.[4]
After strokes
Sometimes after strokes patients' perception of self changes. Often after a stroke, patients report their perception of self in more negative terms than before their stroke. [12]
Aging
It has been found that humans’ ideas of themselves are established early in life but that the perception can change as others ideas are combined with their own. There are differences in the areas activated during self-knowledge retrieval between adults and children. This suggests a difference in self-knowledge neurobiologically due to normal aging. The
medial prefrontal cortex is activated more strongly for subjects when they are describing themselves than when they are describing others. However, children show greater medial prefrontal cortex activation than adults when performing self-knowledge retrieval tasks. Additionally, children and adults activate different specific regions in the medial prefrontal cortex. Adults activate the posterior precuneus more while children activate the anterior precuneus and the posterior cingulate.[3]
The understanding of the areas of the brain most frequently activated in children and adults can also provide information about how children, adolescents, and adults view themselves differently. Older children more significantly activate the medial prefrontal cortex because they deal with introspection much less frequently than adults and adolescents. Children have decreased specificity in skills than adults, so they show greater activation during spatial tasks. This is explained by the idea that with increased expertise in a task, decreased interest in wide spatial parameters occurs. When a person is an expert, he or she is able to be more focused in his or her performance. The difference in performance between adults and children is thought to be attributable to different perceptions of the self whether it is more introspective or more concerned with the surroundings and environment.[3]
See also
- Anattā
- Binding problem
- Ego death
- Neural correlates of consciousness
- Open individualism
- Vertiginous question
References
- ^ About Functional MRI. "FMRI - About Functional MRI(General)". Archived from the original on 2012-01-09. Retrieved 2012-01-09.. Accessed November 21, 2011.
- ^ Damasio AR, Grabowski TJ, Bechara A, et al. Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions. Nature Neuroscience. 2000;3(10):1049-1056.
- ^ a b c Pfeifer, J. H., Lieberman, M. D., & Dapretto, M. (2007). "I know you are but what am I?!": Neural bases of self- and social knowledge retrieval in children and adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(8), 1323-1337.
- ^ a b Modinos G, Renken R, Ormel J, Aleman A. Self-reflection and the psychosis-prone brain: an fMRI study. Neuropsychology [serial online]. May 2011;25(3):295-305. Available from: MEDLINE with Full Text, Ipswich, MA. Accessed November 7, 2011.
- ^ a b Arzy, S., Thut, G., Mohr, C., Michel, C. M., & Blanke, O. (2006). Neural basis of embodiment: Distinct contributions of temporoparietal junction and extrastriate body area. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(31), 8074-8081.
- ^ Pezzulo G, Barsalou LW, Cangelosi A, Fischer MH, McRae K, Spivey MJ. The mechanics of embodiment: a dialog on embodiment and computational modeling. Frontiers In Psychology.2:5-5.
- fMRIdesign. Memory, 16(4), 351-363.
- ^ Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Garrido, G. J., Bramati, I. E., Caparelli-Daquer, E. M. A., Paiva, M., et al. (2007). The self as a moral agent: Link-ling the neural bases of social agency and moral sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2(3-4), 336-352.
- ^ a b Chiao, J. Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D., et al. (2009). Neural Basis of Individualistic and Collectivistic Views of Self. Human Brain Mapping, 30(9), 2813-2820.
- ^ Carayol J, Schellenberg GD, Dombroski B, Genin E, Rousseau F, Dawson G. Autism risk assessment in siblings of affected children using sex-specific genetic scores. Molecular Autism.2(1):17-17.
- ^ Uddin, L. Q., Davies, M. S., Scott, A. A., Zaidel, E., Bookheimer, S. Y., Iacoboni, M., et al. (2008). Neural Basis of Self and Other Representation in Autism: An fMRI Study of Self-Face Recognition. PLoS ONE, 3(10).
- ^ Ellis-Hill CS, Horn S. Change in identity and self-concept: a new theoretical approach to recovery following a stroke. Clinical Rehabilitation. 2000;14(3):279-287.