The emergence of a shared action ontology: Building blocks for a theory

Variation in self and familiar facial recognition in bipolar disorder patients at different clinical stages

Previous studies suggest a close relationship between self-disorders and schizophrenia or unipolar depression. However, few studies have explored the characteristics of self-processing in bipolar disorder (BD) during different clinical states. This study compared the differences in self-face recognition (SFR) among patients with bipolar mania (BPM), bipolar depression (BPD), bipolar remission (RM), and healthy controls (HC). Images of subject's own face, a familiar face, and an unfamiliar face were combined in pairs at a certain proportion to obtain three types of blended images. We then compared the tendency between BD and HC while judging two kinds of blended faces emerging from presentation software. The results showed that the BPM and BPD groups seemed to lack an advantage in self-recognition. Self-processing and familiarity processing were significantly enhanced in BPM patients, while only familiarity processing was enhanced in BPD. The severity of clinical symptoms was not significantly correlated with self-bias or familiarity bias in BD.

Consciousness Beyond Neural Fields: Expanding the Possibilities of What Has Not Yet Happened

In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply to any of the field theories, or any other neural theory, of consciousness, their explanatory power is limited. As discussed in detail herein, the matter is complicated further by the facts than any scientifically operational definition of consciousness is inevitably partial, and that the phenomenon has no spatial dimensionality. Under the light of insights from research on meditation and expanded consciousness, chronic pain syndrome, healthy aging, and eudaimonic well-being, we may conceive consciousness as a source of potential energy that has no clearly defined spatial dimensionality, but can produce significant changes in others and in the world, observable in terms of changes in time. It is argued that consciousness may have evolved to enable the human species to generate such changes in order to cope with unprecedented and/or unpredictable adversity. Such coping could, ultimately, include the conscious planning of our own extinction when survival on the planet is no longer an acceptable option.

Priming the self as an agent influences causal, spatial, and temporal events: implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings

People intentionally engage in goal-directed actions—i.e., set goals, create plans, and execute volitional control, which are fundamental for our understanding of ourselves, others, and events. In three experiments we created a novel sentence unscrambling task that was used to prime the self-as-agent (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “I”), the self-as-patient (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “me”), or no prime (i.e., sentences that contain proper names only), and tested whether that priming would influence the interpretation of causal, spatial, and temporal events. Results demonstrated that the self-as-agent primed participants were more likely to attribute causal influence to a kayaker in a river (Study 1), to assign spatial directionality consistent with an agent moving through space (Study 2), and to assign temporal directionality consistent with an agent moving through time (Study 3). Taken together, these three studies demonstrate that situated conceptualizations of the self as an agent can be a springboard for relevant empirical and theoretical contributions to a broad range of ideas and approaches—from theories of agency to embodied cognition, from language systems to metaphoric representation frameworks, with some potentials even in the clinical and mental health field. Along these lines, implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings are discussed.

A Different Conversation: Psychological Research and the Problem of Self in Autism

Observations about peculiarities in the autistic population concerning type and frequency of references to subjective states, and lack of perspective taking, have been on the whole referred to as the paradox of the autistic self, i.e. a co-presence of ego-centeredness and weak self-referentiality (Lombardo & Baron Cohen 2010). Prevalent approaches in autism ascribe these peculiarities to high order disfunctions caused by neurological factors, such as defective self-encoding processes. Two narratives told by an adult man with Asperger during counselling are examined with Conversation Analysis; the analysis identifies features that may lead to descriptions like the paradox of autistic self, but also reveals competences related to perspective-taking and narrative construction. Drawing on Bruner’s narrative theory, as well on recent interactional research on autism and the psychology of self, it is suggested that a relatively limited practice with narrative co-construction might be at the origin of the peculiarities observed. A socio-developmental approach to the understanding of autism not only can provide explanations compatible with first and second person accounts of life with autism, but can also open new paths for researching ways of self-construction that are less reliant on social interaction. The article finally challenges assumptions in psychological research about the ability of humans to access their internal states, and discusses how such assumptions can deter understanding of atypical populations.

Is Our Self Related to Personality? A Neuropsychodynamic Model

The concept and the assessment of personality have been extensively discussed in psychoanalysis and in clinical psychology over the years. Nowadays there is large consensus in considering the constructs of the self and relatedness as central criterions to assess the personality and its disturbances. However, the relation between the psychological organization of personality, the construct of the self, and its neuronal correlates remain unclear. Based on the recent empirical data on the neural correlates of the self (and others), on the importance of early relational and attachment experiences, and on the relation with the brain's spontaneous/resting state activity (rest-self overlap/containment), we propose here a multilayered model of the self with: (i) relational alignment; (ii) self-constitution; (iii) self-manifestation; and (iv) self-expansion. Importantly, these different layers of the self can be characterized by different neuronal correlates-this results in different neuronally grounded configurations or organizations of personality. These layers correspond to different levels of personality organization, such as psychotic (as related to the layer of self-constitution), borderline (as related to the layer of self-manifestation) and neurotic (as related to the layer of self-expansion). Taken together, we provide here for the first time a neurobiologically and clinically grounded model of personality organization, which carries major psychodynamic and neuroscientific implications. The study of the spontaneous activity of the brain, intrinsically related to the self (rest-self overlap/containment) and the interaction with stimuli (rest-stimulus interaction) may represent a further advance in understanding how our default state plays a crucial role in navigating through the internal world and the external reality.

Why Is Virtual Reality Interesting for Philosophers?

This article explores promising points of contact between philosophy and the expanding field of virtual reality research. Aiming at an interdisciplinary audience, it proposes a series of new research targets by presenting a range of concrete examples characterized by high theoretical relevance and heuristic fecundity. Among these examples are conscious experience itself, “Bayesian” and social VR, amnestic re-embodiment, merging human-controlled avatars and virtual agents, virtual ego-dissolution, controlling the reality/virtuality continuum, the confluence of VR and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as of VR and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), VR-based social hallucinations and the emergence of a virtual Lebenswelt, religious faith and practical phenomenology. Hopefully, these examples can serve as first proposals for intensified future interaction and mark out some potential new directions for research.

Socially Extended Cognition and Shared Intentionality

The paper looks at the intersection of extended cognition and social cognition. The central claim is that the mechanisms of shared intentionality can equally be considered as coupling mechanisms of cognitive extension into the social domain. This claim will be demonstrated by investigating a detailed example of cooperative action, and it will be argued that such cases imply that socially extended cognition is not only about cognitive vehicles, but that content must additionally be taken into account. It is finally outlined how social content externalism can in principle be grounded in socially extended cognition.

Role of the 5-HT2A Receptor in Self- and Other-Initiated Social Interaction in Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Induced States: A Pharmacological fMRI Study

Distortions of self-experience are critical symptoms of psychiatric disorders and have detrimental effects on social interactions. In light of the immense need for improved and targeted interventions for social impairments, it is important to better understand the neurochemical substrates of social interaction abilities. We therefore investigated the pharmacological and neural correlates of self- and other-initiated social interaction. In a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced, crossover study 24 healthy human participants (18 males and 6 females) received either (1) placebo + placebo, (2) placebo + lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD; 100 μg, p.o.), or (3) ketanserin (40 mg, p.o.) + LSD (100 μg, p.o.) on three different occasions. Participants took part in an interactive task using eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging completing trials of self- and other-initiated joint and non-joint attention. Results demonstrate first, that LSD reduced activity in brain areas important for self-processing, but also social cognition; second, that change in brain activity was linked to subjective experience; and third, that LSD decreased the efficiency of establishing joint attention. Furthermore, LSD-induced effects were blocked by the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT_2AR) antagonist ketanserin, indicating that effects of LSD are attributable to 5-HT_2AR stimulation. The current results demonstrate that activity in areas of the "social brain" can be modulated via the 5-HT_2AR thereby pointing toward this system as a potential target for the treatment of social impairments associated with psychiatric disorders.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Distortions of self-representation and, potentially related to this, dysfunctional social cognition are central hallmarks of various psychiatric disorders and critically impact disease development, progression, treatment, as well as real-world functioning. However, these deficits are insufficiently targeted by current treatment approaches. The administration of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging and real-time eye-tracking offers the unique opportunity to study alterations in self-experience, their relation to social cognition, and the underlying neuropharmacology. Results demonstrate that LSD alters self-experience as well as basic social cognition processing in areas of the "social brain". Furthermore, these alterations are attributable to 5-HT_2A receptor stimulation, thereby pinpointing toward this receptor system in the development of pharmacotherapies for sociocognitive deficits in psychiatric disorders.

Importance Modulates the Temporal Features of Self-Referential Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study

A growing number of studies have demonstrated preferential processing of self-related information. However, previous research has been limited in examining the distinction between processes related to the self and those related to the non-self, it remains unclear how self-related information with differing levels of importance is processed within the self. The present study examined how the importance of self-related content affects the neural activity involved in self-referential processing. The behavioral results showed that the participants had faster responses to more important self-related content. The event-related potential (ERP) results showed that early attention resources were diverted to the identification of highly important self-related content compared with minimally important self-related content, as reflected by the enhanced P200. Furthermore, the N200 amplitude for highly important self-related content was smaller than for moderately important self-related content which, in turn, were smaller than minimally important self-related content. Moreover, the P300 amplitudes were modulated by the degree of importance of self-related content, whereby a higher importance of self-related content led to larger P300 amplitudes. Taken together, these findings demonstrate an effect of the degree of importance of the self-related content at both behavioral and neurophysiological levels.

Individual differences in anthropomorphic attributions and human brain structure

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to animals, non-living things or natural phenomena. It is pervasive among humans, yet nonetheless exhibits a high degree of inter-individual variability. We hypothesized that brain areas associated with anthropomorphic thinking might be similar to those engaged in the attribution of mental states to other humans, the so-called 'theory of mind' or mentalizing network. To test this hypothesis, we related brain structure measured using magnetic resonance imaging in a sample of 83 healthy young adults to a simple, self-report questionnaire that measured the extent to which our participants made anthropomorphic attributions about non-human animals and non-animal stimuli. We found that individual differences in anthropomorphism for non-human animals correlated with the grey matter volume of the left temporoparietal junction, a brain area involved in mentalizing. Our data support previous work indicating a link between areas of the brain involved in attributing mental states to other humans and those involved in anthropomorphism.

Dream Lucidity

In this paper, the authors examine digital environments as a learning spaces and site of extended cognition by demonstrating the presence of active learning in both video games and their linked online collaborative communities. The authors use Shaun Gallagher's theory of extended mind to posit the notion that the shared cognitive space created in the game between creator and player can be extend to include many others through the digital communities of those players though gaming literacy. The authors conducted a think-aloud protocol with participants playing Yume Nikki, a minimalist Japanese indie game, then reading materials on hikikomori, a condition the creator is believed to have. They conclude from their results that active and creative learning of human communities should not be undervalued when designing virtual environments even when the environment is single-player.

Learning by observation: insights from Williams syndrome

Observing another person performing a complex action accelerates the observer’s acquisition of the same action and limits the time-consuming process of learning by trial and error. Observational learning makes an interesting and potentially important topic in the developmental domain, especially when disorders are considered. The implications of studies aimed at clarifying whether and how this form of learning is spared by pathology are manifold. We focused on a specific population with learning and intellectual disabilities, the individuals with Williams syndrome. The performance of twenty-eight individuals with Williams syndrome was compared with that of mental age- and gender-matched thirty-two typically developing children on tasks of learning of a visuo-motor sequence by observation or by trial and error. Regardless of the learning modality, acquiring the correct sequence involved three main phases: a detection phase, in which participants discovered the correct sequence and learned how to perform the task; an exercise phase, in which they reproduced the sequence until performance was error-free; an automatization phase, in which by repeating the error-free sequence they became accurate and speedy. Participants with Williams syndrome beneficiated of observational training (in which they observed an actor detecting the visuo-motor sequence) in the detection phase, while they performed worse than typically developing children in the exercise and automatization phases. Thus, by exploiting competencies learned by observation, individuals with Williams syndrome detected the visuo-motor sequence, putting into action the appropriate procedural strategies. Conversely, their impaired performances in the exercise phases appeared linked to impaired spatial working memory, while their deficits in automatization phases to deficits in processes increasing efficiency and speed of the response. Overall, observational experience was advantageous for acquiring competencies, since it primed subjects’ interest in the actions to be performed and functioned as a catalyst for executed action.

Indeterminacy of translation and impaired intersubjectivity in schizophrenia

Impaired intersubjectivity in schizophrenia has been subject to debate in clinical psychiatry and psychotherapy. In this paper, we will discuss recent perspectives on disordered intersubjectivity among the core symptoms of schizophrenic psychoses. Based on symptoms crucial for communication deficits in schizophrenia, we address indeterminacy of translation as a potential default in the therapeutic setting. The concept of indeterminacy of translation reviewed here assumes that no reference for translation of languages is given, but principles to substitute this non-referring space of unknown terms are to be demonstrated: firstly, a maxim of indulgence which requires that as many true considerations as possible have to be achieved by the final interpretation of a proposition, and secondly, a coherence which is given when the considerations are deductable and not contradictory. Indulgence and coherence are hypothesized as reflecting an approximation process of reconstructing intersubjectivity in conditions where it is severely disturbed such as schizophrenia.

Synesthesia, sensory-motor contingency, and semantic emulation: how swimming style-color synesthesia challenges the traditional view of synesthesia

Synesthesia is traditionally regarded as a phenomenon in which an additional non-standard phenomenal experience occurs consistently in response to ordinary stimulation applied to the same or another modality. Recent studies suggest an important role of semantic representations in the induction of synesthesia. In the present proposal we try to link the empirically grounded theory of sensory-motor contingency and mirror system based embodied simulation/emulation to newly discovered cases of swimming style-color synesthesia. In the latter color experiences are evoked only by showing the synesthetes a picture of a swimming person or asking them to think about a given swimming style. Neural mechanisms of mirror systems seem to be involved here. It has been shown that for mirror-sensory synesthesia, such as mirror-touch or mirror-pain synesthesia (when visually presented tactile or noxious stimulation of others results in the projection of the tactile or pain experience onto oneself), concurrent experiences are caused by overactivity in the mirror neuron system responding to the specific observation. The comparison of different forms of synesthesia has the potential of challenging conventional thinking on this phenomenon and providing a more general, sensory-motor account of synesthesia encompassing cases driven by semantic or emulational rather than pure sensory or motor representations. Such an interpretation could include top-down associations, questioning the explanation in terms of hard-wired structural connectivity. In the paper the hypothesis is developed that the wide-ranging phenomenon of synesthesia might result from a process of hyperbinding between “too many” semantic attribute domains. This hypothesis is supplemented by some suggestions for an underlying neural mechanism.

Reduced negative BOLD responses in the default-mode network and increased self-focus in depression

OBJECTIVES

Functional imaging studies in major depressive disorder (MDD) indicate abnormal resting state neural activity and negative blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses (NBRs) in regions of the default-mode network (DMN).

METHODS

Since activity in DMN regions has been associated with self-relatedness, we investigated neural activity in these regions during self-related emotional judgement and passive picture viewing in 25 patients with MDD and 25 healthy controls in an event-related fMRI design.

RESULTS

Behaviourally, MDD subjects showed significantly higher ratings of self-relatedness that also correlated with depression symptoms such as hopelessness. Neuroimaging results in MDD patients showed significantly lower negative BOLD responses (NBRs) in anterior medial cortical regions during judgement of self-relatedness while posterior medial regions showed increased NBRs. Unlike in healthy subjects, the anterior medial cortical NBRs were no longer parametrically modulated by the degree of self-relatedness in MDD patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that reduced NBRs in the anterior regions of the default-mode network may signify decoupling from self-relatedness in MDD patients with the consecutive abnormal increase of self-focus.

Contributions of Sign Language Research to Gesture Understanding: What can Multimodal Computational Systems Learn from Sign Language Research

This paper considers neurological, formational and functional similarities between gestures and signed verb predicates. From analysis of verb sign movement, we offer suggestions for analyzing gestural movement (motion capture, kinematic analysis, trajectory internal structure). From analysis of verb sign distinctions, we offer suggestions for analyzing co-speech gesture functions.

Is our self nothing but reward?

Neuroscience has increasingly explored the neural mechanisms underlying our sense of self. Recent studies have demonstrated the recruitment of regions like the ventral tegmental area, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the ventral striatum to self-specific stimuli-regions typically associated with reward-related processing. This raises the question of whether there is a relationship between self and reward and, if so, how these different fields can be linked. Three relationship models that aim to explore the relationship between self and reward are discussed here: integration, segregation, and parallel processing. Their pros and cons are reviewed in light of the most recent findings. The conclusion is that both the fields of self and reward may benefit from increased interaction. This interaction may help to fill in some of the missing pieces regarding reward-related processing, as well as illuminate how brain function can bring forward the philosophical concept and psychological reality of self.

How is our self related to midline regions and the default-mode network?

The problem of the self has been of increasing interest in recent neuroscience. Brain imaging studies have raised the question of whether neural activity in cortical midline regions is self-specific and whether self-specific activity is related to resting state activity (RSA). A quantitative meta-analysis that included 87 studies, representing 1433 participants, was conducted to discuss these questions. First, the specificity of the self (e.g. hearing one's own name, seeing one's own face) was tested and compared across familiar (using stimuli from personally known people) and other (non-self-non-familiar, i.e. strangers and widely-known figures) conditions. Second, the relationship between the self and resting state activity, as reflected by the default-mode network (DMN), was tested. The results indicated that the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC) is specifically involved in self-processing when compared to familiarity, other, and task/stimulus effects. On the contrary, other midline regions, i.e., medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) were functionally unspecific as they were recruited during the processing of both self-specific and familiar stimuli. Finally, the PACC was recruited during self-specific stimuli and this activity overlapped with DMN activity during resting state, thus distinguishing the self-related processing from both that of the familiar and other conditions. Taken together, our data suggest that our sense of self may result from a specific kind of interaction between resting state activity and stimulus-induced activity, i.e., rest-stimulus interaction, within the midline regions.

Biomedical ontologies: toward scientific debate

OBJECTIVES

Biomedical ontologies have been very successful in structuring knowledge for many different applications, receiving widespread praise for their utility and potential. Yet, the role of computational ontologies in scientific research, as opposed to knowledge management applications, has not been extensively discussed. We aim to stimulate further discussion on the advantages and challenges presented by biomedical ontologies from a scientific perspective.

METHODS

We review various aspects of biomedical ontologies going beyond their practical successes, and focus on some key scientific questions in two ways. First, we analyze and discuss current approaches to improve biomedical ontologies that are based largely on classical, Aristotelian ontological models of reality. Second, we raise various open questions about biomedical ontologies that require further research, analyzing in more detail those related to visual reasoning and spatial ontologies.

RESULTS

We outline significant scientific issues that biomedical ontologies should consider, beyond current efforts of building practical consensus between them. For spatial ontologies, we suggest an approach for building "morphospatial" taxonomies, as an example that could stimulate research on fundamental open issues for biomedical ontologies.

CONCLUSIONS

Analysis of a large number of problems with biomedical ontologies suggests that the field is very much open to alternative interpretations of current work, and in need of scientific debate and discussion that can lead to new ideas and research directions.

Sex and individual differences in induced and evoked EEG measures of action observation

We used two established methods for analysing the EEG response of the neurotypical adult human brain to examine the execution and observation of simple motor actions. In one, execution or observation of a button-press in response to a tone caused a decrease in the power at 8-13 Hz ("mu") frequencies. In the other, the response preparation (or the inferred response preparation when these actions are observed in another person) was measured by the averaged response time-locked potentials measured over motor cortex--the "readiness potential". Results indicated that the mirrored readiness potentials were bilaterally generated. We found sex differences for both measures. However, whereas females showed a greater degree of response for the mu power measure during the observation of movement only, males showed larger readiness potentials during both movement performance and observation. Both measures have been claimed to be neural correlates of mirror systems in the brain where processes responsible for actions are linked to the perception of such actions. Such mirror systems have also been implicated in higher order social cognition such as empathy. However, we found no correlations between either of our EEG measures and self-report scales of social cognition. The results imply sex differences in the measured systems and for mirroring that are not directly related to social cognition. We suggest that the results may indicate two dissociable motor mirroring systems that can be measured by induced and evoked EEG.

Is a “Special Psychology” of Practice Possible?

Traditional theories of culture and socialization in the social and behavioral sciences have concentrated on how attitudes and values come to be “internalized” and thus shared by members of a collectivity. The emergence of practice theory challenges the classical theory of socialization and acculturation by shifting the focus of analysis away from explicit symbolic representations and towards tacit, motor-schematic procedures. In this paper I argue that even as they reject the traditional object of older socialization-based accounts, most practice theorists continue to operate with the same outmoded theory of socialization and acculturation inherited from classical sociology. I use Wacquant’s (2004) “carnal ethnography” of becoming a boxer to outline an alternative approach—grounded in recent research in cognitive neuroscience—which provides a more adequate explanation of how practices come to be acquired and transmitted from person to person.

Motor abstraction: a neuroscientific account of how action goals and intentions are mapped and understood

Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience shed light on the existence of a common neural mechanism that could account for action and intention to understand abilities in humans and non-human primates. Empirical evidence on the neural underpinnings of action goals and on their ontogeny and phylogeny is introduced and discussed. It is proposed that the properties of the mirror neuron system and the functional mechanism describing them, embodied simulation, enabled pre-linguistic forms of action and intention understanding. Basic aspects of social cognition appear to be primarily based on the motor cognition that underpins one's own capacity to act, here defined as motor abstraction. On the basis of this new account of the motor system, it is proposed that intersubjectivity is the best conceived of as intercorporeity.

Exploring the brain basis of joint action: co-ordination of actions, goals and intentions

Humans are frequently confronted with goal-directed tasks that can not be accomplished alone, or that benefit from co-operation with other agents. The relatively new field of social cognitive neuroscience seeks to characterize functional neuroanatomical systems either specifically or preferentially engaged during such joint-action tasks. Based on neuroimaging experiments conducted on critical components of joint action, the current paper outlines the functional network upon which joint action is hypothesized to be dependant. This network includes brain areas likely to be involved in interpersonal co-ordination at the action, goal, and intentional levels. Experiments focusing specifically on joint-action situations similar to those encountered in real life are required to further specify this model.

An information-based approach to action understanding

It has been proposed that the ability to make sense of other agents' behavior relies on the activation of internal mechanisms that map action perception onto action execution. In this study we explored the constraints on this ability introduced by eyeheight-scaled information in the optic array. Short and tall participants provided maximum overhead reaching judgments for themselves and another participant. Perceptual information was manipulated by changing the participants' optically specified eyeheight. Observers were modestly accurate in perceiving maximum overhead reach for themselves and for another actor whose action capabilities differed. Perceived maximum overhead reach increased for both self- and other-judgments when the perceiver's eyeheight was increased. The results suggest an important role of perceptual information that has gone unrecognized in existing accounts of action understanding and prediction.

Adolescent development of motor imagery in a visually guided pointing task

The development of action representation during adolescence was investigated using a visually guided pointing motor task (VGPT) to test motor imagery. Forty adolescents (24 males; mean age 13.1 years) and 33 adults (15 males; mean age 27.5 years) were instructed to both execute and imagine hand movements from a starting point to a target of varying size. Reaction time (RT) was measured for both Execution (E) and Imagery (I) conditions. There is typically a close association between time taken to execute and image actions in adults because action execution and action simulation rely on overlapping neural circuitry. Further, representations of actions are governed by the same speed-accuracy trade-off as real actions, as expressed by Fitts' Law. In the current study, performance on the VGPT in both adolescents and adults conformed to Fitts' Law in E and I conditions. However, the strength of association between E and I significantly increased with age, reflecting a refinement in action representation between adolescence and adulthood.

Self-referential processing in our brain--a meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self

The question of the self has intrigued philosophers and psychologists for a long time. More recently, distinct concepts of self have also been suggested in neuroscience. However, the exact relationship between these concepts and neural processing across different brain regions remains unclear. This article reviews neuroimaging studies comparing neural correlates during processing of stimuli related to the self with those of non-self-referential stimuli. All studies revealed activation in the medial regions of our brains' cortex during self-related stimuli. The activation in these so-called cortical midline structures (CMS) occurred across all functional domains (e.g., verbal, spatial, emotional, and facial). Cluster and factor analyses indicate functional specialization into ventral, dorsal, and posterior CMS remaining independent of domains. Taken together, our results suggest that self-referential processing is mediated by cortical midline structures. Since the CMS are densely and reciprocally connected to subcortical midline regions, we advocate an integrated cortical-subcortical midline system underlying human self. We conclude that self-referential processing in CMS constitutes the core of our self and is critical for elaborating experiential feelings of self, uniting several distinct concepts evident in current neuroscience.

Differential role of the orbital frontal lobe in emotional versus cognitive perspective-taking

Lesions of the orbital frontal lobe, particularly its medial sectors, are known to cause deficits in empathic ability, whereas the role of this region in theory of mind processing is the subject of some controversy. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with healthy participants, emotional perspective-taking was contrasted with cognitive perspective-taking in order to examine the role of the orbital frontal lobe in subcomponents of theory of mind processing. Subjects responded to a series of scenarios presented visually in three conditions: emotional perspective-taking, cognitive perspective-taking and a control condition that required inferential reasoning, but not perspective-taking. Group results demonstrated that the medial orbitofrontal lobe, defined as Brodmann's areas 11 and 25, was preferentially involved in emotional as compared to cognitive perspective-taking. This finding is both consistent with the lesion literature, and resolves the inconsistency of orbital frontal findings in the theory of mind literature.

The motor theory of social cognition: a critique

Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of action have considerably enlarged our understanding of human motor cognition. In particular, the activity of the mirror system, first discovered in the brain of non-human primates, provides an observer with the understanding of a perceived action by means of the motor simulation of the agent's observed movements. This discovery has raised the prospects of a motor theory of social cognition. In humans, social cognition includes the ability to mindread, and many motor theorists of social cognition try to bridge the gap between motor cognition and mindreading by endorsing a simulation account of mindreading. Here, we question the motor theory of social cognition and give reasons for our skepticism.

Emergence of self and other in perception and action: An event-control approach

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order.

Action identity: Evidence from self-recognition, prediction, and coordination

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it.