scholarly journals Dissociable roles for the rTPJ and dmPFC in self-other processing: a HD-tDCS study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. Martin ◽  
J. Huang ◽  
M. Meinzer

AbstractBackgroundSocial interaction relies on the integration and distinction of self and other. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) are two regions consistently associated with social processes. Theories of rTPJ function in social cognition include self-other distinction, self-inhibition, or embodied mental rotation, whereas the dmPFC is associated with a wide range of social functions involving understanding and encoding information pertaining to others. However, to date, no study has provided causal evidence for dissociable roles of the rTPJ and dmPFC in social cognition.Method52 healthy young adults were stratified into two studies and received either dmPFC or rTPJ anodal HD-tDCS in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, repeated measures design. Subjects completed a social cognitive battery measuring self-other processing across an implicit and explicit level one (line-of-sight) and level two (mental rotation) visual perspective taking tasks (VPT), as well as self and other encoding effects on episodic memory in order to test the self-reference effect (SRE).ResultsStimulation of the dmPFC selectively enhanced integration of the other perspective into self as indexed by an increase in congruency effect (incongruent-congruent) across both explicit VPT tasks. It also removed the SRE in episodic memory, indexed by increasing the recognition of other-encoded words and reducing the recognition of self-encoded words. Stimulation of the rTPJ resulted in improved inhibition of the self-perspective during level two VPT only, as indexed by a reduction of the congruency effect when taking the other perspective.ConclusionOur results provide the first causal evidence for dissociable roles of the dmPFC and rTPJ in social cognition. This research supports theories suggesting that rTPJ facilitates embodied mental rotation, whereas the dmPFC integrates information relevant to the other into that of the self.

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 3642-3654 ◽  
Author(s):  
A K Martin ◽  
J Huang ◽  
A Hunold ◽  
M Meinzer

Abstract Theories of right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) function in social cognition include self–other distinction, self-inhibition, or embodied rotation, whereas the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) is associated with integrating social information. However, no study has provided causal evidence for dissociable roles of the rTPJ and dmPFC in social cognition. A total of 52 healthy young adults were stratified to receive either dmPFC or rTPJ anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, repeated measures design. Self–other processing was assessed across implicit and explicit level 1 (line-of-sight) and level 2 (mental rotation) visual perspective taking (VPT) tasks, and self–other effects on memory. DmPFC stimulation selectively increased the influence of the allocentric perspective during egocentric perspective taking, indexed by an increase in congruency effect across explicit VPT tasks. Moreover, dmPFC stimulation removed the self-reference effect in episodic memory by increasing the recognition of other and decreasing the recognition of self-encoded words. Stimulation of the rTPJ resulted in improved inhibition of the egocentric-perspective during level 2 VPT only, indexed by a reduction of the congruency effect when taking the allocentric perspective. This research supports theories suggesting that the rTPJ facilitates embodied mental rotation of the self into an alternate perspective, whereas the dmPFC integrates social information relevant to self-directed processes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110097
Author(s):  
Jianqin Wang ◽  
Henry Otgaar ◽  
Mark L Howe ◽  
Sen Cheng

Memory is considered to be a flexible and reconstructive system. However, there is little experimental evidence demonstrating how associations are falsely constructed in memory, and even less is known about the role of the self in memory construction. We investigated whether false associations involving non-presented stimuli can be constructed in episodic memory and whether the self plays a role in such memory construction. In two experiments, we paired participants’ own names (i.e., self-reference) or the name “Adele” (i.e., other-reference) with words and pictures from Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) lists. We found that (1) participants not only falsely remembered the non-presented lure words and pictures as having been presented, but also misremembered that they were paired with their own name or “Adele,” depending on the referenced person of related DRM lists; and (2) there were more critical lure–self associations constructed in the self-reference condition than critical lure–other associations in the other-reference condition for word but not for picture stimuli. These results suggest a self-enhanced constructive effect that might be driven by both relational and item-specific processing. Our results support the spreading-activation account for constructive episodic memory.


Author(s):  
Erel Shvil ◽  
Herbert Krauss ◽  
Elizabeth Midlarsky

The construct “self” appears in diverse forms in theories about what it is to be a person. As the sense of “self” is typically assessed through personal reports, differences in its description undoubtedly reflect significant differences in peoples’ apperception of self. This report describes the development, reliability, and factorial structure of the Experience of Sense of Self (E-SOS), an inventory designed to assess one’s perception of self in relation to the person’s perception of various potential “others.” It does so using Venn diagrams to depict and quantify the experienced overlap between the self and “others.” Participant responses to the instrument were studied through Exploratory Factor Analysis. This yielded a five-factor solution: 1) Experience of Positive Sensation; 2) Experience of Challenges; 3) Experience of Temptations; 4) Experience of Higher Power; and 5) Experience of Family. The items comprising each of these were found to produce reliable subscales. Further research with the E-SOS and suggestions for its use are offered.  DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v4i2_shvil


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 155-173
Author(s):  
Joona Taipale

SummaryThis article examines the foundations of social experience from a psychoanalytic perspective. In current developmental psychology, social cognition debate, and phenomenology of empathy, it is widely assumed that the self and the other are differentiated from the outset, and the basic challenge is accordingly taken to consist in explaining how the gap between the self and the other can be bridged. By contrast, in the psychoanalytic tradition, the central task is considered to lie in explaining how such a gap is established in the first place. My article develops this latter idea. I focus on the infant’s early experience of care, show how the presence of the caregiver can be interpreted in terms of an interoceptive experience, illustrate the gradual self/other differentiation from this perspective, and thus argue that the other is granted ‘otherness’ gradually. By emphasising this graduality, I challenge the assumption that self/other differentiation dominates the infant’s life from the outset. In this manner, I show how the psychoanalytic theory may be used in contesting one of the cornerstones of the current research paradigm.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Wening Udasmoro

In literature, questions of the self and the other are frequently presented. The identity politics that gained prominence after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 has occupied considerable space in this debate throughout the globe, including in France. One example of a novel dealing with the self and other is Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (2015). This article attempts to explore the processes of selfing and othering in this work. The politics of identity that seems to present Muslims and Islam as the other and French as the self is also extended to other identities and aspects involved in the novel. This article attempts to show, first, how the French author Houellebecq positions the self and other in Soumission; second, the type of self and other the novel focuses on; and third, how its selfing and othering processes reveal the gender hierarchy and social categorization of French society. It finds that the novel presents a hierarchy in its narrative through which characters are positioned based on their gender and sexual orientation, as well as their age and ethnic heritage.


Author(s):  
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh ◽  
Itai Roffman ◽  
Sabatien Lingomo ◽  
Elizabeth Pugh

Duane Rumbaugh was one of the first primatologists of the modern era (which began after WWII), to engage in comparative studies of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates. In fact, it was Rumbaugh who drew the world's attention to the Order Primates and who helped initiate the International Primatological Society, IPS, the first academic society to be organized around an Order rather than a discipline. His work eventually led in two directions, first the development of the Transfer Index, a was completely new way of looking at learning. The TI seperated monkeys from apes as completely as did Gallup's mirror task. From this arose the Primate Test Battery, a video based system to test cognitive skills across a wide range of tasks from memory to numerical skils in primates. The other direction was to look at language and its effect on cognition. Only Apes succeeded in the laguage tasks. With Lana's success arose a raft of critiques that - in the light of more recent findings about the structure of human language, are now rendered invalid. Rumbaugh's initial findings in all domains has remained sound. This includes fundamental differences between monkeys and apes in their capacity to spontaneously begin control their attention, to consciously monitor their own behavior, and then to alter it deliberately, or by their own choice. It is the ape's conscious capacity to control its attention and to conciously monitor outcomes in a cause/effect manner, that allows for the acquisition of langauge. This also allows for the creation of "personal self", as a being that exists apart from the current experience of the self. Language greatly assists the emergence of this ability in apes, as does early rearing in which the ape is carried but not seperated from its mother. This allows pointing and joint reference to appear far ahead of schedule and for the spontaneouls development of human language in cross-species co-reared apes. The presence of a wild-reared mother (not present in other captive environments)also allows for the emergence of a nonhuman form of vocal language. The implications of this work for future investigations of apes are discussed.


Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136236132095101
Author(s):  
Alexandra Zinck ◽  
Uta Frith ◽  
Peter Schönknecht ◽  
Sarah White

Recent studies on mentalizing have shown that autistic individuals who pass explicit mentalizing tasks may still have difficulties with implicit mentalizing tasks. This study explores implicit mentalizing by examining spontaneous speech that is likely to contain mentalistic expressions. The spontaneous production of meta-statements provides a clear measure for implicit mentalizing that is unlikely to be learned through experience. We examined the self- and other-descriptions of highly verbally able autistic and non-autistic adults in terms of their spontaneous use of mentalistic language and meta-representational utterances through quantitative and qualitative analysis. We devised a hierarchical coding system that allowed us to study the types of statements produced in comparable conditions for the self and for a familiar other. The descriptions of autistic participants revealed less mentalistic content relating to psychological traits and meta-statements. References to physical traits were similar between groups. Within each group, participants produced a similar pattern of types of mental utterance across ‘self’ and ‘other’ conditions. This suggests that autistic individuals show a unique pattern of mental-state-representation for both self and other. Meta-statements add a degree of complexity to self- and other-descriptions and to the understanding of mental states; their reduction in autism provides evidence for implicit mentalizing difficulties. Lay abstract Autistic people can have difficulties in understanding non-autistic people’s mental states such as beliefs, emotions and intentions. Although autistic adults may learn to overcome difficulties in understanding of explicit (overt) mental states, they may nevertheless struggle with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. This study explores how spontaneous language is used in order to specifically point to this implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. In particular, our study compares the spontaneous statements that were used in descriptions of oneself and a familiar other person. Here, we found that autistic and non-autistic adults were comparable in the number of statements about physical traits they made. In contrast, non-autistic adults made more statements about mentalistic traits (about the mental including psychological traits, relationship traits and statements reflecting about these) both for the self and the other. Non-autistic and autistic adults showed no difference in the number of statements about relationships but in the number of statements about psychological traits and especially in the statements reflecting on these. Each group showed a similar pattern of kinds of statements for the self and for the other person. This suggests that autistic individuals show the same unique pattern of description in mentalistic terms for the self and another person. This study also indicates that investigating spontaneous use of language, especially for statements reflecting about mental states, enables us to look into difficulties with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states.


The observations with which the present communication deals were met with in experiments continuing those on reciprocal innervation of symmetrical muscles. In my previous paper on that subject it had been reported that in regard to symmetrical extensors of the knee the ratio borne by intensity of the ipsilateral inhibition to the contralateral excitation is such that with equal stimuli to right and left symmetrical afferent nerves there is inhibitory suppression of contraction in both the muscles. In other words, under double reciprocal innervation the ipsilateral inhibition by each nerve completely overcomes the contralateral excitation of the other. It was shown that this mutual suppression holds over a wide range of the scale of intensities of stimulation. It was also shown that with quite weak stimuli a simultaneous stimulation of both nerves, stimuli being equal in intensity, often results in concurrent contraction of both muscles. Indeed, with quite weak stimuli, the effect of stimulation of each afferent nerve by itself is, in the decerebrate preparation, usually contraction of the ipsilateral as well as of the contralateral muscle. This being so, it is evident that at some point in the scale of intensities of stimulation there should be a place below which contralateral excitation is stronger than ipsilateral inhibition, whereas above it ipsilateral inhibition is stronger than contralateral excitation.


Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 359 (6372) ◽  
pp. 213-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teruko Danjo ◽  
Taro Toyoizumi ◽  
Shigeyoshi Fujisawa

An animal’s awareness of its location in space depends on the activity of place cells in the hippocampus. How the brain encodes the spatial position of others has not yet been identified. We investigated neuronal representations of other animals’ locations in the dorsal CA1 region of the hippocampus with an observational T-maze task in which one rat was required to observe another rat’s trajectory to successfully retrieve a reward. Information reflecting the spatial location of both the self and the other was jointly and discretely encoded by CA1 pyramidal cells in the observer rat. A subset of CA1 pyramidal cells exhibited spatial receptive fields that were identical for the self and the other. These findings demonstrate that hippocampal spatial representations include dimensions for both self and nonself.


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