Neural Dynamics in the Processing of Personal Objects as an Index of the Brain Representation of the Self

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Muñoz ◽  
Pilar Casado ◽  
David Hernández-Gutiérrez ◽  
Laura Jiménez-Ortega ◽  
Sabela Fondevila ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Neural Dynamics ◽  
The Brain

From many to one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Laukkonen ◽  
Heleen A Slagter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
Open Monitoring ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Brain

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

The ”true me”—one or many?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Berent ◽  
Melanie Platt
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Optimality Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
True Self ◽  
Behavioral Test ◽  
Brain Scan ◽  
Moral Behaviors ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Constraint Ranking

Recent results suggest that people hold a notion of the true self, distinct from the self. Here, we seek to further elucidate the “true me”—whether it is good or bad, material or immaterial. Critically, we ask whether the true self is unitary. To address these questions, we invited participants to reason about John—a character who simultaneously exhibits both positive and negative moral behaviors. John’s character was gauged via two tests--a brain scan and a behavioral test, whose results invariably diverged (i.e., one test indicated that John’s moral core is positive and another negative). Participants assessed John’s true self along two questions: (a) Did John commit his acts (positive and negative) freely? and (b) What is John’s essence really? Responses to the two questions diverged. When asked to evaluate John’s moral core explicitly (by reasoning about his free will), people invariably descried John’s true self as good. But when John’s moral core was assessed implicitly (by considering his essence), people sided with the outcomes of the brain test. These results demonstrate that people hold conflicting notions of the true self. We formally support this proposal by presenting a grammar of the true self, couched within Optimality Theory. We show that the constraint ranking necessary to capture explicit and implicit view of the true self are distinct. Our intuitive belief in a true unitary “me” is thus illusory.

scholarly journals On The Verge of the Hybrid Mind

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Surjo Soekadar ◽  
Jennifer Chandler ◽  
Marcello Ienca ◽  
Christoph Bublitz
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Recent advances in neurotechnology allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending persons with technologies and creating an assemblage that we call a hybrid mind. In some ways the mind has always been a hybrid, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artifacts) and the natural environment. However, with the emergence of neurotechnologies enabling bidirectional flows of information between the brain and AI-enabled devices, integrated into mutually adaptive assemblages, we have arrived at a point where the specific examination of this new instantiation of the hybrid mind is essential. Among the critical questions raised by this development are the effects of these devices on the user’s perception of the self, and on the user’s experience of their own mental contents. Questions arise related to the boundaries of the mind and body and whether the hardware and software that are functionally integrated with the body and mind are to be viewed as parts of the person or separate artifacts subject to different legal treatment. Other questions relate to how to attribute responsibility for actions taken as a result of the operations of a hybrid mind, as well as how to settle questions of the privacy and security of information generated and retained within a hybrid mind.

The Self-conscious Mind and the Brain

1977 ◽  
pp. 355-376
Author(s):  
Karl R. Popper ◽  
John C. Eccles
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
The Brain

2. The human brain

2017 ◽  
pp. 17-33
Author(s):  
Susan Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Motor Control ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
The Self ◽  
Central Processor ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Vast Network ◽  
Successful Science

‘The human brain’ considers the brain as a vast network of connections from which come our extraordinary abilities: perception, learning, memory, reasoning, language, and somehow or another—consciousness. Different areas deal with vision, hearing, speech, body image, motor control, and forward planning. They are all linked, but this is not done through one central processor, but by millions of criss-crossing connections. By contrast, human consciousness seems to be unified. A successful science of consciousness must therefore explain the contents of consciousness, the continuity of consciousness, and the self who is conscious. Research linking consciousness to brain function is discussed along with conditions such as synaesthesia, blindsight, stroke damage, and amnesia.

Neuro-occupation: A self-organizing approach to conflate the brain, context, and occupation

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
Seyed Alireza Derakhshanrad ◽  
Emily Piven
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Occupational Participation ◽  
Circular Causality ◽  
Matrix Construction ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Descriptive Method

Background. Neuro-occupation was coined to conflate three distinctly different concepts: the brain, context, and occupation. Discussing neuro-occupation has been more of an academic exercise rather than cogently researched for everyday practice, perhaps due to the seemingly incongruity among the concepts. Purpose. This article traces the self-organization approach, an assumption of complex systems, to understand how the concepts can be conflated. Method. Deductive category application, a qualitative descriptive method for tracing theoretical assumptions, was drawn from the lived experiences of 11 Iranian participants with cerebrovascular accidents. Matrix construction aided collection of data for analysis. Findings. The self-organization approach, underpinning neuro-occupation, was shown to be traceable, explaining how occupational participation may be influenced by the brain circular causality and perturbations provided by the context. Implications. By understanding the dynamics of self-organization, occupational therapists can identify and create salient features that may motivate and enable clients to enhance occupational participation.

scholarly journals Interrogating the Notion of Self, ‘Mind’ and Personhood in Tangkhul Naga Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-75
Author(s):  
Yuimirin Kapai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
The Self ◽  
Internal Organs ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Conceptual Foundation ◽  
Mental Faculty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Brain

The article attempts to examine the conceptual foundation of the self, mind and personhood in the traditional thoughts of the Tangkhul Nagas and the social implications and cultural models that shaped these conceptualisations. Partly constrained by the scarcity of written accounts, I have closely looked at the language usage, etymology of words and cultural practices of the community. Ning (‘mind’) is the central concept. Rich embodied expressions associate thoughts and emotions with certain internal organs of human body. The soul resides in the liver, luck in the brain and feelings in the heart. Ning is said to be acquired. This raises the question of whether the acquisition of ‘mind’ strictly refers to an acquisition of the mental faculty or does it include social norms and other skills. Drawing from the philosophy of Mead, the central argument is that the self, mind and ‘significant symbols’ conflated in the idea of personhood.

scholarly journals Multiple timescales of neural dynamics and integration of task-relevant signals across cortex

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (36) ◽  
pp. 22522-22531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Spitmaan ◽  
Hyojung Seo ◽  
Daeyeol Lee ◽  
Alireza Soltani
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Area ◽  
Dynamic Decision Making ◽  
Neural Dynamics ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Neuronal Dynamics ◽  
Time Constants ◽  
Multiple Timescales ◽  
Comprehensive Method ◽  
Organizational Principle ◽  
The Brain

A long-lasting challenge in neuroscience has been to find a set of principles that could be used to organize the brain into distinct areas with specific functions. Recent studies have proposed the orderly progression in the time constants of neural dynamics as an organizational principle of cortical computations. However, relationships between these timescales and their dependence on response properties of individual neurons are unknown, making it impossible to determine how mechanisms underlying such a computational principle are related to other aspects of neural processing. Here, we developed a comprehensive method to simultaneously estimate multiple timescales in neuronal dynamics and integration of task-relevant signals along with selectivity to those signals. By applying our method to neural and behavioral data during a dynamic decision-making task, we found that most neurons exhibited multiple timescales in their response, which consistently increased from parietal to prefrontal and cingulate cortex. While predicting rates of behavioral adjustments, these timescales were not correlated across individual neurons in any cortical area, resulting in independent parallel hierarchies of timescales. Additionally, none of these timescales depended on selectivity to task-relevant signals. Our results not only suggest the existence of multiple canonical mechanisms for increasing timescales of neural dynamics across cortex but also point to additional mechanisms that allow decorrelation of these timescales to enable more flexibility.

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