Does medial prefrontal cortex activity during self‐knowledge reference reflect the uniqueness of self‐knowledge?1

Abstract: For this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine whether medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) activity during self‐knowledge reference reflects the uniqueness of self‐knowledge. Experiment 1 investigated neural activity during self‐knowledge reference (“Does the word describe you?”) and self‐monitoring (“Does the word make you feel pleasant?”). The results showed that self‐knowledge reference and self‐monitoring activate common neural substrates within the MPFC. Experiment 2 compared neural activity produced by self‐knowledge reference, other‐knowledge (acquaintance‐knowledge) reference (“Does this word describe the person?”), and evaluation (“Is this word socially desirable?”). Results showed no increase in MPFC activity during self‐knowledge reference relative to other‐knowledge reference. Furthermore, self‐knowledge reference and other‐knowledge reference share common neural substrates within the MPFC. The results described indicate that it is unlikely that MPFC activity during self‐knowledge reference reflects the uniqueness of self‐knowledge. The feature, as reflected in MPFC activity, is discussed.     

A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self

The topic of the self remains one of considerable controversy, and many arguments have been put forth suggesting the intuitive concept of self must be in some way mistaken – in part based on results in the cognitive and neural sciences. In this article I offer the alternative positive proposal that “the self” may indeed refer to a physical/computational system within the brain. To do this, I draw on empirical work regarding the neural basis of consciousness and decision-making, and on philosophical work regarding ecological control, unified group perspectives, and functional/mechanistic explanation. The work I review jointly supports the conclusion that a “core-circuit” of interacting cortical regions – the global workspace network – can be understood as a unified system for consciously perceiving and deciding, and thus fulfills many of the roles intuitively assigned to the self. I conclude that this self-concept need not be mistaken given current empirical knowledge.     

The minimal self hypothesis

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness.     

Emotions beyond brain and body

The emerging consensus in the philosophy of cognition is that cognition is situated, i.e., dependent upon or co-constituted by the body, the environment, and/or the embodied interaction with it. But what about emotions? If the brain alone cannot do much thinking, can the brain alone do some emoting? If not, what else is needed? Do (some) emotions (sometimes) cross an individual's boundary? If so, what kinds of supra-individual systems can be bearers of affective states, and why? And does that make emotions “embedded” or “extended” in the sense cognition is said to be embedded and extended? Section 2 shows why it is important to understand in which sense body, environment, and our embodied interaction with the world contribute to our affective life. Section 3 introduces some key concepts of the debate about situated cognition. Section 4 draws attention to an important disanalogy between cognition and emotion with regard to the role of the body. Section 5 shows under which conditions a contribution by the environment results in non-trivial cases of “embedded” emotions. Section 6 is concerned with affective phenomena that seem to cross the organismic boundaries of an individual, in particular with the idea that emotions are “extended” or “distributed.”     

Self‐determination theory as a foundation for personality researchers

In this introductory article, we first describe the impetus for this special issue. What made us think that self‐determination theory (SDT) might provide a sort of foundation for the rest of personality psychology? For readers unfamiliar with SDT, we then provide a historical overview that covers the evolution of the six “mini‐theories” that currently compose SDT: cognitive evaluation theory, causality orientations theory, organismic integration theory, basic psychological needs theory, goal contents theory, and relational motivation theory. Following each section are preliminary suggestions about how each mini‐theory might be useful or informative in other branches of personality. This special issue contains nine articles, each of which makes its own attempt to newly link its area of personality research to SDT. Even if SDT is not the appropriate seed for greater consilience in personality psychology, we urge the field not to neglect the search for unifying principles (Sheldon, Cheng, & Hilpert, 2011); it may finally be time to renew the search for a “grand theory” in personality.     

The trans-species concept of self and the subcortical-cortical midline system

The nature of the self has been one of the central problems in philosophy and most recently in neuroscience. Here, we suggest that animals and humans share a 'core self' represented in homologous underlying neural networks. We argue that the core self might be constituted by an integrative neuronal mechanism that enables self-related processing (SRP). Because mammalian organisms are capable of relating bodily states, intrinsic brain states (e.g. basic attentional, emotional and motivational systems) and environmental stimuli to various life-supporting goal-orientations, SRP appears to be a core ability preserved across numerous species. Recent data suggest that SRP is operating via a central integrative neural system made up of subcortical-cortical midline structures (SCMSs), that are homologous across mammalian species.     

Voices,Boxes, and Sources of Messages

Can adults be induced to use social rules distinguishing “self” and “other” to respond to the behaviors of technologies? In a 2×2×2 between-subjects laboratory experiment involving the use of multiple computers with voice output, 88 computer-literate college students used a computer for tutoring and a different computer for testing. The performance of the tutoring session was either praised or criticized (Manipulation 1) in the same voice as the tutoring session or a distinct voice (Manipulation 2) via the computer (box) that performed the tutoring or a distinct computer (box; Manipulation 3). Respondents were shown to use voices but not boxes to distinguish “self” from “other” behavior in applying the social rules “Performance evaluations from others are more accurate than are performance evaluations of self,”“Praise from others is friendlier than praise from self,” and “Criticism from self is friendlier than is criticism from others,” to evaluate the tutoring and evaluation session.     

Circling the wagons or opening the circle

“To approach eudaimonia or human flourishing,” Darcia Narvaez writes, “one must have a concept of human nature… a normal baseline.” This article asks: what is the human baseline so that we may develop public policy to suit and advance human and planetary flourishing? It proposes that our “baseline” is relational, where each person becomes her singular self through networks of relations with others and planet. Relationality is explored through Trinity, covenant, evolutionary biology, and psychology. The article concludes that public policy must be grounded not in “us-them” thinking but in relationality as this is how we are created.     

Chaos, Communications Theory, and God's Abundance

As the creator, God is the source of the abundance for immense variety manifest in creation. The reservoir for this abundance is the primordial chaos, identified as the Pandemonium Tremendum. God manages this inexhaustible “storehouse of the snow” through decisions or “willings,” giving rise to constraints that result in the ordered array of creation. Without this active and decisive vigilance, the Pandemonium Tremendum would scour and ravage the creation. Also, as an omniscient, unobtrusive, and impartial witness, God manages the primordial chaos without compromising its unfettered variety. What is the role of chaos as the Ungrund? All creatures are the consequence of acts of decision. God alone is self‐decisive and, hence, the uniquely sovereign creator. That is, God arises spontaneously through an aboriginal act of in–speaking. Otherwise, and in utter contradiction to its radically unprincipled character, the primordial chaos would provide the arche or sufficient reason for divine causation. This mythic and metaphysical account falls in the tradition of Meister Eckhart and Nicolas Berdyaev and is expressed in the rubric of communication theory.     

Towards a literary account of mental health from James' Principles of Psychology

The field of mental health tends to treat its literary metaphors as literal realities with the concomitant loss of vague “feelings of tendency” in “unusual experiences”. I develop this argument through the prism of William James’ (1890) “The Principles of Psychology”. In the first part of the paper, I reflect upon the relevance of James' “The Psychologist's Fallacy” to a literary account of mental health. In the second part of the paper, I develop the argument that “connotations” and “feelings of tendency” are central to resolving some of the more difficult challenges of this fallacy. I proceed to do this in James' spirit of generating imaginative metaphors to understand experience. Curiously, however, mental health presents a strange paradox in William James’ (1890) Principles of Psychology. He constructs an elaborate conception of the “empirical self” and “stream of thought” but chooses not to use these to understand unusual experiences – largely relying instead on the concept of a “secondary self.” In this article, I attempt to make more use of James' central division between the “stream of thought” and the “empirical self” to understand unusual experiences. I suggest that they can be usefully understood using the loose metaphor of a “binary star” where the “secondary self” can be seen as an “accretion disk” around one of the stars. Understood as literary rather the literal, this metaphor is quite different to more unitary models of self-breakdown in mental health, particularly in its separation of “self” from “the stream of thought” and I suggest it has the potential to start a re-imagination of the academic discourse around mental health.     

CONCEPTIONS OF SELF/NO-SELF AND MODES OF CONNECTION Comparative Soteriological Structures in Classical Chinese Thought

This essay examines the ways that the terms “self” and “no‐self” can illuminate the views of classical Chinese thinkers, particularly Confucians such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, and the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. In particular, the use of the term “no‐self ” to describe Zhuangzi's position is defended. The concepts of self and no‐self are analyzed in relation to other terms within the thinkers' “concept clusters”—specifically temporality, nature, and social roles—and suggestions are given for constructing typologies that sort out the range of meanings of self and no‐self based on the characteristics of the relations among terms within the concept clusters. The essay focuses on the way that the Confucians and Zhuangzi use concepts of self and no‐self, respectively, as soteriological strategies that aim at making connections with larger systems or wholes, and it concludes that different connections are emphasized by the Confucians and Zhuangzi precisely because the various connections are made possible and sustained by different conceptions of self, temporality, nature, and social roles.     

Self‐Creation? On the Dignity of Human Beings

It was not through biotechnological possibilities that human beings first discovered “self‐creation” as a question. Rather, the question fits into the horizon of the primordial human desire to be like God. Against this hamartiological insight, a soteriological expectation related to technology has arisen. The latter expectation must be rejected, but not in all respects. Rather, one has to stress the inventive and constructive aspect of the dignity to rule, which is implied in human linguistic reason (λογοσ). There are, however, boundaries to be perceived and to be set. This becomes evident when embryo‐consuming research is at stake. In this context, the main question is: Wherein lies human “dignity”? This is the same question as: wherein lies the “being‐as‐person”? The author sees the fewest difficulties in attributing personhood to the beginning of life, which occurs with the fusion of ovum and sperm. This attribution is not justified by the material substrate as such. Rather, it is the result of intertwining the element, namely the lump of cells, and the word of institution, which “speaks together” the lump of cells and the person: This lump of cells is a person. Human beings are honored and enabled to use this instituting word, a φυσ?ι, because according to Gen 2:7 and 19f, God granted unto human beings linguistic reason (λογοσ), and thus the power to define. In this intertwining of element and instituting word lies the human dignity, which is undeservedly conferred on humans as a categorical gift. This absolute gratuity implies the unconditional acknowledgment of the dignity and the personhood of human beings—before one can speak of any characteristics or abilities. Psalm 8 underscores the elementary human dependency on unconditional acknowledgment as an inviolable person, an acknowledgment preceding all human characteristics and achievements. The psalm further intertwines this acknowledgment and the commission to rule, which is conferred on human beings, as an insoluble unity. What at first appear to be opposites is in fact a synopsis and inseparable connection of creaturely human determinations that correspond to God's simultaneously being the almighty creator and the compassionate, merciful father. By using “dignity” and “person” as critical terms of negotiation, theology can engage in a conversation with the societal and political public. In rejecting the dominant determination of the “person” as an autonomous, self‐determinately active, individual rational being, theology finds an ally in juridical thinking, which also acknowledges the dignity even of persons unable to act. Two consequences are to be drawn concerning biotechnology: perceiving the remaining dependency, vulnerability and vanity of human beings forces us to abandon illusions of “self‐creation” and immortality. Second, priorities are required that determine the goals and limits of research—especially in protecting the personal dignity of embryos—in the light of our accountability before God the creator and judge.     

Identity and sociocultural change: Comparing young indigenous people in Chiapas who have different sociodemographic trajectories

One of the most commonly used distinctions in cross‐cultural studies is the one between individualism and collectivism. One of the criticisms levelled at this distinction is that it fails to incorporate the differences that may exist when comparing people from a rural context with little formal education to people from the same group who live in an urban context where formal education is the norm. Bearing in mind these sociodemographic factors, we have compared the self‐concepts among 104 young indigenous people in Chiapas (Mexico), having divided them into three groups: “rural‐traditional,” “rural–urban” and “urban.” These people's self‐concepts were analysed using a task that contrasts personal self‐concept with social self‐concept and a technique in which participants draw themselves along with the things and people they consider most important to them. The results reveal significant differences between the three groups. The personal categories are given a higher value in the “urban” group while the social categories score higher in the “rural‐traditional” group. Regarding the results of the indigenous self‐portraits, from the content analysis of the drawings, 16 categories emerged. These findings are discussed in the light of Greenfield's theory of social change and human development.     

The Development of the Conceptual Organization of Self

This study posed a cognitive-differentiation hypothesis for the development of the concept of self. Children from kindergarten through sixth grade (N = 112), divided equally between the sexes, were administered a class-inclusion task and two measures of the concept of self. The Imaginary Audience Scale for the Young Child (IAS; Elkind & Bowen, 1979) indexed two aspects of the Jamesian “I,” or self-as-subject. A newly developed instrument, the Part-of-Me Scale (PMS), measured the various constituents of the Jamesian “me,” or self-as-object. The results indicated a sex difference on the IAS subscales and a grade effect for constituents judged as integral to self-definition. The results suggest that a relational concept of self, characterized by individuation from and integration with the external world, may be a developmental achievement not apparent until middle adolescence.     

婴儿如何认识他心：“似我”假说述评

Meltzoff的“似我”假说认为,婴儿借助“我他对等”认识解读他人行为和心理状态,通过他人间的互动信息推断和调整自身行为。“似我”认识以动作表征为基础,借助第一人称体验建立双向映射,对“似我”之人进行因果推理,由此构成发展路径引导婴儿认识他心。注视追随与模仿两种初级社会学习机制进一步丰富了婴儿对社交关系的理解,使人类学习的渠道突破了自我体验的局限而变得更加多元。     

Beyond “Heartless Conservative” and “Bleeding Heart Liberal” Caricatures: How Religiosity Shapes the Relationship Between Political Orientation and Empathy

Is political orientation associated with self‐reported empathy? Popular caricatures frame political orientation in terms of the “heartless conservative” and the “bleeding heart liberal.” Yet, previous research has produced findings that present mixed evidence to support these caricatures. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, analyses show that the caricatures of the caring liberal and the cold‐hearted conservative are supported by results for empathy—in which conservatives have lower levels of empathy than liberals—but this pattern holds only when individuals also have low levels of religiosity. In the context of high religiosity, self‐identified conservatives do not have lower empathy than self‐identified liberals, net of a host of sociodemographic characteristics. Our observations demonstrate that patterns in empathy across political orientation are evident only when levels of different forms of religiosity are considered.     

Culture and perceptions of self—other similarity

In testing possible cultural effects of the use of the self as an habitual reference point to which others are compared, we expected that: (a) individualistic participants (i.e., those who give priority to personal goals) would rate self—other similarity higher when asked “How similar is X to you?” than when asked “How similar are you to X?”, whereas nondirectional similarity judgements (“How similar are these two people?”) would resemble the former directional comparison; (b) collectivistic participants (i.e., those who give priority to in‐group goals) would show a weaker or, possibly, reversed pattern, especially using in‐group comparison others. Neither hypothesis was upheld. However, the individualists perceived the in‐group to be relatively more similar to themselves as compared to the collectivists. This difference cannot be explained by response bias, status asymmetry, or role differentiation. We propose an explanation in terms of the differential relationship between self and other representations for people from collectivist versus individualist cultures.     

Can we distinguish an “I” and “ME” during listening?—an event-related EEG study on the processing of first and second person personal and possessive pronouns

Theoretically, stimuli can be related to the self as subject (“I”) or object (“ME”) of experience. This event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigated whether listening to personal and possessive pronouns elicits different modes of self-processing regarding time-course and neural sources. Going beyond previous research, first (1PP) and second person (2PP) pronouns were included to determine the specificity of self-processing. Participants listened passively to German pronouns while the electroencephalogram was recorded. Modulation of ERPs revealed a processing advantage for the 2PP personal pronoun “du” (“you”) already in early time windows. Regarding possessive pronouns, N1 amplitudes indicated increased attention orientation to the 1PP pronoun “mein” (“my”), whereas during later time windows, processing of 1PP and 2PP possessive pronouns did not differ but differed from the third person pronoun “sein” (“his”). ERP source imaging suggests that primary sensory brain regions (auditory cortex), the insula and cortical midline structures are differentially involved into these two processing modes. The results support the idea of distinct self-processing modes (“I” and “ME”) and confirm their dynamic nature. Moreover, they demonstrate that on a neural level neither “I” or “ME” are invariantly tied to the first person, in line with the hypothesis that self-processing is relational and context-dependent.