A Philosophical Perspective on the Relation between Cortical Midline Structures and the Self

Abstract

In recent years there has been increasing evidence that an area in the brain called the cortical midline structures (CMSs) is implicated in what has been termed self-related processing. This article will discuss recent evidence for the relation between CMS and self-consciousness in light of several important philosophical distinctions. First, we should distinguish between being a self (i.e., being a subject of conscious experience) and being aware of being a self (i.e., being able to think about oneself as such). While the former consists in having a first-person perspective on the world, the latter requires the ability to explicitly represent one’s own perspective as such. Further, we should distinguish between being aware of oneself “as subject” and being aware of oneself “as object.” The focus of existing studies investigating the relation between CMS and self has been predominantly on the ability to think about oneself (and in particular thinking of oneself “as object”), while the more basic aspects involved in being a self have been neglected. However, it is important to widen the scope of the cognitive neuroscience to include the latter, not least because this might have important implications for a better understanding of disorders of the self, such as those involved in schizophrenia. In order to do so, cognitive neuroscience should work together with philosophy, including phenomenology. Second, we need to distinguish between personal and subpersonal level explanations. It will be argued that although it is important to respect this distinction, in principle, some subpersonal facts can enter into constitutive conditions of personal-level phenomena. However, in order for this to be possible, one needs both careful conceptual analysis and knowledge about relevant cognitive mechanisms.

The Affective Core of the Self: A Neuro-Archetypical Perspective on the Foundations of Human (and Animal) Subjectivity

“…Empirical human data indicate that the “minimal Self” is related to mental imaging and representation processing that emerge from “resting-state activity” of the CMS ( Qin and Northoff, 2011 ; Musholt, 2013 ; Northoff et al, 2014 ; Hu et al, 2016 ; Weiler et al, 2016 ; LeDoux and Brown, 2017 ). Moreover, the CMS are anatomically and functionally closely connected with a set of SCMSs ( Northoff and Panksepp, 2008 ; Panksepp and Northoff, 2009 ), that have been considered the neurophysiological substrate of an ancestral form of subjectivity, named the “Core-Self” by a member of this research group ( Panksepp, 1998b ) and the “proto-Self” by Damasio (1999) .…”

The Chief Role of Frontal Operational Module of the Brain Default Mode Network in the Potential Recovery of Consciousness from the Vegetative State: A Preliminary Comparison of Three Case Reports

“…Indeed, the brain structures comprising the frontal OM have been repeatedly shown to be involved in a sense of being a self ( i.e. , being a subject of self-conscious experience [ 55 ]) [ 56 - 58 ], where one experiences a direct presence of oneself as the center of an externalized multimodal perceptual/phenomenal reality [ 59 - 61 ]. Remarkably, the sense of such ‘centerdenss’ is never disappear even in deep meditation when the body sense vanishes and is repeatedly described by the experts as the ‘still mind’, ‘feeling of silence’ , ‘unboundedness’ or a ‘samadhi’ state [ 62 , 63 ].…”

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“…As argued by Musholt ( 2013a ), it is important to distinguish between having conscious experiences (“being a self”), and being aware of oneself having conscious experiences (“being aware of being a self”). While the former can be a subjective experience, the latter requires an objectification of that experience.…”