Spatial representations of self and other in the hippocampus

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.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110569
Author(s):  
Kévin Campos-Moinier ◽  
Lionel Brunel

Sharing a task with another person can introduce the need to discriminate representations that refer to our own action from that of the other person’s. The current understanding is that information about the stimulus event drives the self-other discrimination process, as it promotes (via the reactivation of feature codes) the representation that encodes the corresponding action. However, this mechanistic explanation relies on experimental situations in which stimulus event information (e.g., spatial location) is always, and directly available. Thus, it remains unclear whether, and how we could successfully discriminate between self- and other-related action representations in the absence of such information. The present study addressed this unanswered question using a novel joint Simon task-based paradigm. We report the results of three experiments in which we manipulated the availability of stimulus event information into the contralateral space. Our findings demonstrate that participants are able to compensate for the absence of stimulus event information by relying on temporal features of their co-actor’s action-effects (Experiment 1). Even more surprising was that participants continued to monitor the temporal features of their co-actor’s actions even when given a verbal signal by their co-actor (Experiments 2a), or full access to the common workspace (Experiment 2b). Our results are strong evidence that the representation of actions is not purely stimulus driven. They suggest that the temporal dimension of the other person’s actions is able to drive the self-other discrimination process, in the same way as other perceptual dimensions and feature codes that are shared with the stimulus event.


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.


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.


2002 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 1395-1403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako M. Watabe ◽  
Holly J. Carlisle ◽  
Thomas J. O'Dell

Activation of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) with the group I mGluR selective agonist (R,S)-3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG) induces a long-term depression (LTD) of excitatory synaptic transmission in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. Here we investigated the potential roles of pre- and postsynaptic processes in the DHPG-induced LTD at excitatory synapses onto hippocampal pyramidal cells in the mouse hippocampus. Activation of mGluRs with DHPG, but not ACPD, induced LTD at both Schaffer collateral/commissural fiber synapses onto CA1 pyramidal cells and at associational/commissural fiber synapses onto CA3 pyramidal cells. DHPG-induced LTD was blocked when the G-protein inhibitor guanosine-5′- O-(2-thiodiphosphate) was selectively delivered into postsynaptic CA1 pyramidal cells via an intracellular recording electrode, suggesting that DHPG depresses synaptic transmission through a postsynaptic, GTP-dependent signaling pathway. The effects of DHPG were also strongly modulated, however, by experimental manipulations that altered presynaptic calcium influx. In these experiments, we found that elevating extracellular Ca2+ concentrations ([Ca2+]o) to 6 mM almost completely blocked the effects of DHPG, whereas lowering [Ca2+]o to 1 mM significantly enhanced the ability of DHPG to depress synaptic transmission. Enhancing Ca2+ influx by prolonging action potential duration with bath applications of the K+ channel blocker 4-aminopyridine (4-AP) also strongly reduced the effects of DHPG in the presence of normal [Ca2+]o (2 mM). Although these findings indicate that alterations in Ca2+-dependent signaling processes strongly regulate the effects of DHPG on synaptic transmission, they do not distinguish between potential pre- versus postsynaptic sites of action. We found, however, that while inhibiting both pre- and postsynaptic K+ channels with bath-applied 4-AP blocked the effects of DHPG; inhibition of postsynaptic K+channels alone with intracellular Cs+ and TEA had no effect on the ability of DHPG to inhibit synaptic transmission. This suggests that presynaptic changes in transmitter release contribute to the depression of synaptic transmission by DHPG. Consistent with this, DHPG induced a persistent depression of both AMPA and N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor-mediated components of excitatory postsynaptic currents in voltage-clamped pyramidal cells. Together our results suggest that activation of postsynaptic mGluRs suppresses transmission at excitatory synapses onto CA1 pyramidal cells through presynaptic effects on transmitter release.


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.


1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Benveniste ◽  
M. B. Jørgensen ◽  
M. Sandberg ◽  
T. Christensen ◽  
H. Hagberg ◽  
...  

The removal of glutamatergic afferents to CA1 by destruction of the CA3 region is known to protect CA1 pyramidal cells against 10 min of transient global ischemia. To investigate further the pathogenetic significance of glutamate, we measured the release of glutamate in intact and CA3-lesioned CA1 hippocampal tissue. In intact CA1 hippocampal tissue, glutamate increased sixfold during ischemia; in the CA3-lesioned CA1 region, however, glutamate only increased 1.4-fold during ischemia. To assess the neurotoxic potential of the ischemia-induced release of glutamate, we injected the same concentration of glutamate into the CA1 region as is released during ischemia in normal, CA3-lesioned, and ischemic CA1 tissue. We found that this particular concentration of glutamate was sufficient to destroy CA1 pyramids in the vicinity of the injection site in intact and CA3-lesioned CA1 tissue when administered during control (non-ischemic) conditions. In contrast, the same amount injected during ischemia in the CA3-lesioned CA1 region destroyed pyramidal cells in a widely distributed zone around the injection site in the CA1 region. It is concluded that the ischemia-induced damage of pyramidal cells in CA1 is dependent on glutamate release and intact innervation from CA3.


2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
VASSILIOS PAIPAIS

AbstractThis article is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematique. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths. That is, either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or a radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this article understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique's authority and function.


1983 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 841-846 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Mody ◽  
P. Leung ◽  
J. J. Miller

Perfusion of 50 μM norepinephrine (NE) produced a marked, reversible decrease (range 20–28%) of the extracellular population spike and excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) responses of the CA1 region evoked by stratum radiatum stimulation in the rat hippocampal slice preparation. The effects of NE were dramatically altered in slices obtained from animals which were previously treated with intracerebral or intraventricular injections of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) to destroy forebrain catecholamine systems. In the latter preparations NE produced a reduction in the inhibition of the EPSP (50%), enhancement of the population spike amplitude, and multiple spike discharges characteristic of ongoing epileptiform activity. The reversal of NE-induced inhibition and the generation of seizurelike activity in 6-OHDA-treated animals suggests that NE may, in part, act upon interneurons to produce a disinhibition of CA1 pyramidal cells.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra-Nadia Sharifi ◽  
Farid Abolhassani ◽  
Mohammad Reza Zarrindast ◽  
Shabnam Movassaghi ◽  
Nasrin Rahimian ◽  
...  

Transient global cerebral ischemia causes loss of pyramidal cells in CA1 region of hippocampus. In this study, we investigated the neurotrophic effect of the immunosuppressant agent FK506 in rat after global cerebral ischemia. Both common carotid arteries were occluded for 20 minutes followed by reperfusion. In experimental group 1, FK506 (6 mg/kg) was given as a single dose exactly at the time of reperfusion. In the second group, FK506 was administered at the beginning of reperfusion, followed by its administration intraperitoneally (IP) 6, 24, 48, and 72 hours after reperfusion. FK506 failed to show neurotrophic effects on CA1 region when applied as a single dose of 6 mg/kg. The cell number and size of the CA1 pyramidal cells were increased, also the number of cell death decreased in this region when FK506 was administrated 48 h after reperfusion. This work supports the possible use of FK506 in treatment of ischemic brain damage.


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