Who Am I: The Conscious and the Unconscious Self
Michael Schaefer, Georg Northoff
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience March 17, 2017 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00126 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Embodied cognition Unconscious mind Cognitive science Consciousness Self Somatosensory system Cognitive psychology Epistemology Psychoanalysis |
| Citations | 43 |
| Key points | Proposes that the conscious self is linked to cortical midline structures and an unconscious, embodied facet of the self may be linked to somatosensory cortices. |
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.
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| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 5
- The temporal structure of resting-state brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex predicts self-consciousness Neuropsychologia January 21, 2016
- Brain and self – a neurophilosophical account Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health 2013
- Six views of embodied cognition 2002
- Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences October 1, 2001
- The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience 1991