In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, (...) taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach. (shrink)

An argument is developed for the conclusion that certain neurological conditions and disorders are directly relevant for understanding the self?'s embodiment and the ownership of conscious experience enjoyed by such an embodied self. Since these neurological conditions and disorders provide evidence that there can be shifts of, and compromises to, ownership, they help identify neural substrates and realizers of such ownership. However, even if recent neuroimaging and neuropsychological nominees for neural substrates of ownership unity are core realizers of ownership, they (...) are not its total realizers. Implications of the distinction between core and total realizers are discussed. (shrink)

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two (...) key forms of polymorphism of self-representation: dreams in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or 'observer' perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases 'vicarious dreams' and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self-representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)

Autoscopic phenomena are complex experiences that include the visual illusory reduplication of one’s own body. From a phenomenological point of view, we can distinguish three conditions: autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experiences. The dysfunctional pattern involves multisensory disintegration of personal and extrapersonal space perception. The etiology, generally either neurological or psychiatric, is different. Also, the hallucination of Self and own body image is present during dreams and differs according to sleep stage. Specifically, the representation of the Self in REM dreams (...) is frequently similar to the perception of Self in wakefulness, whereas in NREM dreams, a greater polymorphism of Self and own body representation is observed. The parallels between autoscopic phenomena in pathological cases and the Self-hallucination in dreams will be discussed to further the understanding of the particular states of self awareness, especially the complex integration of different memory sources in Self and body representation. (shrink)

Here I examine Bernard Suits’s definition of games and explain why that definition is in need of reference to representation or, put more generally, to semiosis. And, once admitting the necessity of the representational in games, Suits’s definition must also then admit the essential paradoxy of games.

Memory is a general attribute of living species, whose diversification reflects both evolutionary and developmental processes. Episodic-autobiographical memory is regarded as the highest human ontogenetic achievement and as probably being uniquely human. EAM, autonoetic consciousness and the self are intimately linked, grounding, supporting and enriching each other’s development and cohesiveness. Their development is influenced by the socio-cultural–linguistic environment in which an individual grows up or lives. On the other hand, through language, textualization and social exchange, all three elements leak into (...) the world and participate to the dynamic shaping and re-shaping of the cultural scaffolding of the self, mental time traveling and EAM formation. Deficits in self-related processing, autonetic consciousness, emotional processing and mental time traveling can all lead to or co-occur with EAM disturbances, as we illustrate by findings from EAM impairments associated with neurological or psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Artificial stimulation of the peripheral vestibular system has been shown to improve ownership of body parts in neurological patients, suggesting vestibular contributions to bodily self-consciousness. Here, we investigated whether galvanic vestibular stimulation interferes with the mechanisms underlying ownership, touch, and the localization of one’s own hand in healthy participants by using the “rubber hand illusion” paradigm. Our results show that left anodal GVS increases illusory ownership of the fake hand and illusory location of touch. We propose that these changes are (...) due to vestibular interference with spatial and/or temporal mechanisms of visual-tactile integration leading to an enhancement of visual capture. As only left anodal GVS lead to such changes, and based on neurological data on body part ownership, we suggest that this vestibular interference is mediated by the right temporo-parietal junction and the posterior insula. (shrink)

We investigate two issues about the subjective experience of one's body: first, is the experience of owning a full-body fundamentally different from the experience of owning a body-part?Second, when I experience a bodily sensation, does it guarantee that I cannot be wrong about whether it is me who feels it? To address these issues, we conducted a series of experiments that combined the rubber hand illusion (RHI) and the “body swap illusion.” The subject wore a head mounted display (HMD) connected (...) with a stereo camera set on the experimenter's head. Sitting face to face, they used their right hand holding a paintbrush to brush each other's left hand. Through the HMD, the subject adopted the experimenter's first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own 1PP: the subject watched either the experimenter's hand from the adopted 1PP, and/or the subject's own hand from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP) in the opposite direction (180°), or the subject's full body from the adopted 3PP (180°, with or without face). The synchronous full-body conditions generate a “self-touching illusion”: many participants felt that “I was brushing my own hand!” We found that (1) the sense of body-part ownership and the sense of full-body ownership are not fundamentally different from each other; and (2) our data present a strong case against the mainstream philosophical view called the immunity principle (IEM). We argue that it is possible for misrepresentation to occur in the subject's sense of “experiential ownership” (the sense that I am the one who is having this bodily experience). We discuss these findings and conclude that not only the sense of body ownership but also the sense of experiential ownership call for further interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific investigations of the proprietary aspects of self—mineness or mental ownership—often presuppose that searching for unique constituents is a productive strategy. But there seem not to be any unique constituents. Here, it is argued that the “self-specificity” paradigm, which emphasizes subjective perspective, fails. Previously, it was argued that mode of access also fails to explain mineness. Fortunately, these failures, when leavened by other findings (those that exhibit varieties and vagaries of mineness), intimate an approach better suited to searching (...) for an explanation. Having an alternative in hand, one that shows promise of achieving explanatory adequacy, provides an additional reason to suspend the search for unique constituents. In short, a negative and a positive thesis are developed: we should cease looking for unique constituents and should seek to explain mineness in accord with the model developed here. This model rejects attempts to explain the phenomenon in terms of either a narrative or a minimal sense of self; it seeks to explain at a “molecular” level, one that appeals to multiple, interacting dimensions. The molecular-level model allows for the possibility that subjective perspective is distinct from a stark perspective (one that does not imply mineness). It proposes that the confounding of tacit expectations plays an important role in explaining mental ownership and its complement, disownership. But the confounding of tacit expectations is not sufficient. Because we are able to be aware of the existence of mental states that do not belong to self, we require a mechanism for determining degree of self-relatedness. One such mechanism is proposed here, and it is shown how this mechanism can be integrated into a general model of mental ownership. In the spirit of suggesting how this model might be able to help resolve outstanding problems, the question as to whether inserted thoughts belong to the patient who reports them is also considered. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically assess Rex Welshon’s position on the neural substrates of ownership unity. First, I comment on Welshon’s definition of ownership unity and underline some of the problems stemming from his phenomenological analysis. Second, I analyze Welshon’s proposal to establish a mechanistic relation between neural substrates and ownership unity. I show that it is insufficient and defend my own position on how neural mechanisms may give rise to whole subjects of experience, which I call the neuro-integrative account (...) of consciousness. Lastly, I comment on Welshon’s philosophical contribution and claim that it leaves the reader theoretically stranded. (shrink)

Neurological disorders of body representation have for a long time suggested the importance of multisensory processing of bodily signals for self-consciousness. One such group of disorders – illusory own body perceptions affecting the entire body – has been proposed to be especially relevant in this respect, based on neurological data as well as philosophical considerations. This has recently been tested experimentally in healthy subjects showing that integration of multisensory bodily signals from the entire body with respect to the three aspects: (...) self-location, first-person perspective, and self-location, is crucial for bodily self-consciousness. Here we present clinical and neuroanatomical data of two neurological patients with paroxysmal disorders of full body representation in whom only one of these aspects, self-identification, was abnormal. We distinguish such disorders of global body representation from related but distinct disorders and discuss their relevance for the neurobiology of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

In keeping with recent views of consciousness of self as represented in the body in action, empirical studies are reviewed that demonstrate a bottlenose dolphin’s conscious awareness of its own body and body parts, implying a representational “body image” system. Additional work reviewed demonstrates an advanced capability of dolphins for motor imitation of self-produced behaviors and of behaviors of others, including imitation of human actions, supporting hypotheses that dolphins have a sense of agency and ownership of their actions and may (...) implicitly attribute those levels of self-awareness to others. Possibly, a mirror-neuron system, or its functional equivalent to that described in monkeys and humans, may mediate both self-awareness and awareness of others. (shrink)

Under normal circumstances, we experience that our center of awareness is located behind our eyes and inside our own body. To learn more about the perceptual processes that underlie this tight coupling between the spatial dimensions of our consciously perceived self and our physical body, we conducted a series of experiments using an ‘out-of-body illusion’. In this illusion, the conscious sense of self is displaced in the testing room by experimental manipulation of the congruency of visual and tactile information and (...) a change in the visual perspective. We demonstrate that when healthy individuals experience that they are located in a different place from their real body, they disown this body and no longer perceive it as part of themselves. Our findings are important because they reveal a relationship between the representation of self-location in the local environment and the multisensory representation of one’s own body. (shrink)

The Phenomenal Self (PS) is widely considered to be dependent on body representations, whereas the Narrative Self (NS) is generally thought to rely on abstract cognitive representations. The concept of the Bodily Social Self (BSS) might play an important role in explaining how the high level cognitive self-representations enabling the NS might emerge from the bodily basis of the PS. First, the phenomenal self (PS) and narrative self (NS), are briefly examined. Next, the BSS is defined and its potential for (...) explaining aspects of social cognition is explored. The minimal requirements for a BSS are considered, before reviewing empirical evidence regarding the development of the BSS over the first year of life. Finally, evidence on the involvement of the body in social distinctions between self and other is reviewed to illustrate how the BSS is affected by both the bottom up effects of multisensory stimulation and the top down effects of social identification. (shrink)

People tend to grossly overestimate the size of their mirror-reflected face. Although this overestimation bias is robust, not much is known about its relationships to self-face perception. In two experiments, we investigated the overestimation bias as a function of the presentation of the own face , the identity of the seen face, and prior exposure to a real mirror. For this we developed a computerized task requiring size estimations of displayed faces. We replicated the observation that people overestimate the size (...) of their mirror-reflected face and showed that the overestimation can be reduced following a brief mirror exposure. We also found that left–right reversal modulates the overestimation bias, depending on the perceived face’s identity. These data underline the enhanced familiarity of left–right reversed self-faces and the importance of size perception for understanding mirror reflection processing. (shrink)

There are two main pathways to investigate the sense of body ownership, (i) through the study of the conditions of embodiment for an object to be experienced as one's own and (ii) through the analysis of the deficits in patients who experience a body part as alien. Here, I propose that E is embodied if some properties of E are processed in the same way as the properties of one's body. However, one must distinguish among different types of embodiment, and (...) only self-specific embodiment can lead to feelings of ownership. I address issues such as the functional role and the dynamics of embodiment, degrees and measures of ownership, and shared body representations between self and others. I then analyse the interaction between ownership and disownership. On the one hand, I show that there is no evidence that in the Rubber Hand Illusion, the rubber hand replaces the biological hand. On the other hand, I argue that the sense of disownership experienced by patients towards their body part cannot be reduced to the mere lack of ownership. (shrink)

In the current study we look at whether subjective and proprioceptive aspects of selfrepresentation are separable components subserved by distinct systems of multisensory integration. We used the rubber hand illusion to draw the location of the ‘self’ away from the body, towards extracorporeal space , thereby violating top-down information about the body location. This was compared with the traditional RHI which drew position of the ‘self’ towards the body . We were successfully able to draw proprioceptive position of the limbs (...) in and out from the body suggesting body perception is a purely bottom-up process, resistant to top-down effects. Conversely, we found subjective self-representation was altered by the violation of top-down body information – as the strong association of subjective and proprioceptive factors found in the In Condition became non-significant in the Out Condition. Interestingly, we also found evidence that subjective embodiment can modulate tactile perception. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of self-consciousness typically begin by dividing experiences of the self into types, each requiring separate explanation. The stereotypical case of an out of body experience may be seen to suggest a distinction between the sense of oneself as an experiencing subject, a mental entity, and a sense of oneself as an embodied person, a bodily entity. Point of view, in the sense of the place from which the subject seems to experience the world, in this case is tied (...) to the sense of oneself as a mental entity and seems to be the ‘real’ self. Closer reading of reports, however, suggests a substantially more complicated picture. For example, the ‘real’ self that is experienced as separate from the body in an OBE is not necessarily experienced as disembodied. Subjects may experience themselves as having two bodies. In cases classed as heautoscopy there is considerable confusion regarding the apparent location of the experiencing subject; is it the ‘real mind’ in the body I seem to be looking out from, or is it in the body that I see? This suggests that visual point of view can dissociate from the experience of one’s own “real mind” or experience of self-identification. I provide a tripartite distinction between the sense of ownership, the sense of embodiment and the sense of subjectivity to better describe these experiences. The phenomenology of OBEs suggests that there are three distinct forms of self-consciousness which need to be explained. (shrink)

Sensorimotor representations are essential for building up and maintaining corporeal awareness, i.e. the ability to perceive, know and evaluate one's own body as well as the bodies of others. The notion of embodied cognition implies that abstract forms of conceptual knowledge may be ultimately instantiated in such sensorimotor representations. In this sense, conceptual thinking should evoke, via mental simulation, some underlying sensorimotor events. In this review we discuss studies on the relation between embodiment and corporeal awareness. We approach the question (...) by issuing challenges from both ends. First, we ask whether bodily representations themselves can be disembodied or disconnected from underlying sensorimotor events. Second, we ask whether any concept, no matter how abstract, can actually be embodied in this way. The strong view of embodied cognition requires a negative answer to the first question, and an affirmative answer to the second. We also focus on the surprising range of cognitive processes that can be explained by linking them to corporeal awareness, such as aesthetic appreciation, and object constancy following brain damage. We conclude that (a) somatomotor simulation may help to understand the external world and the society of other individuals, but (b) some non-somatic forms of simulation may be required to explain how abstract knowledge contributes to understanding others' states. In this sense, the classic divide between sensorimotor and conceptual domains must remain in some form. (shrink)

This paper examines the experience of where we end and the rest of the world begins, that is, the sense of boundaries. Since meditators are recognized for their ability to introspect about the bodily level of experience, and in particular about their sense of boundaries, 27 senior meditators were interviewed for this study. The main conclusions of this paper are that the boundaries of the so-called “physical body” are not equivalent to the individual's sense of boundaries; the sense of boundaries (...) depends upon sensory activity; the sense of boundaries should be defined according to its level of flexibility; the sense of body ownership cannot be reduced to the sense of boundaries; nevertheless, the sense of ownership depends on the level of flexibility of the sense of boundaries. (shrink)

War captivity is an extreme traumatic experience typically involving exposure to repeated stressors, including torture, isolation, and humiliation. Captives are flung from their previous known world into an unfamiliar reality in which their state of consciousness may undergo significant change. In the present study extensive interviews were conducted with fifteen Israeli former prisoners of war who fell captive during the 1973 Yom Kippur war with the goal of examining the architecture of human thought in subjects lacking a sense of body (...) (disembodiment) as a result of confinement and isolation. Analysis of the interviews revealed that threats to a normal sense of body often lead to a loss of the sense of time as an objective dimension. Evidence suggests that the loss of the sense of body and the loss of the sense of time are in fact connected; that is, they collapse together. This breakdown in turn results in a collapse of the sense of self. (shrink)

How do we acquire a mental representation of our own face? Recently, synchronous, but not asynchronous, interpersonal multisensory stimulation between one’s own and another person’s face has been used to evoke changes in self-identification . We investigated the conscious experience of these changes with principal component analyses that revealed that while the conscious experience during synchronous IMS focused on resemblance and similarity with the other’s face, during asynchronous IMS it focused on multisensory stimulation. Analyses of the identified common factor structure (...) revealed significant quantitative differences between synchronous and asynchronous IMS on self-identification and perceived similarity with the other’s face. Experiment 2 revealed that participants with lower interoceptive sensitivity experienced stronger enfacement illusion. Overall, self-identification and body-ownership rely on similar basic mechanisms of multisensory integration, but the effects of multisensory input on their experience are qualitatively different, possibly underlying the face’s unique role as a marker of selfhood. (shrink)