Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, UK.
Conscious Cogn. 2013 Dec;22(4):1231-8. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.004. Epub 2013 Sep 8.
Psychology distinguishes between a bodily and a narrative self. Within neuroscience, models of the bodily self are based on exteroceptive sensorimotor processes or on the integration of interoceptive sensations. Recent research has revealed interactions between interoceptive and exteroceptive processing of self-related information, for example that mirror self-observation can improve interoceptive awareness. Using heartbeat perception, we measured the effect on interoceptive awareness of two experimental manipulations, designed to heighten attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self. Participants gazed at a photograph of their own face or at self-relevant words. In both experimental conditions interoceptive awareness was significantly increased, compared to baseline. Results show that attention to narrative aspects of self, previously regarded as relying on higher-order processes, has an effect similar to self-face stimuli in improving interoceptive awareness. Our findings extend the previously observed interaction between the bodily self and interoception to more abstract amodal representations of the self.
心理学将自我分为身体自我和叙事自我。在神经科学中，身体自我模型基于外感受感觉运动过程或内感受感觉的整合。最近的研究揭示了自我相关信息的内感受和外感受加工之间的相互作用，例如镜像自我观察可以提高内感受意识。我们使用心跳感知来测量两种实验操作对内感受意识的影响，这两种操作旨在提高对身体和叙事自我方面的注意力。参与者注视自己的面部照片或与自我相关的单词。与基线相比，在两种实验条件下，内感受意识都显著提高。结果表明，对自我叙事方面的关注，以前被认为依赖于更高阶的过程，对提高内感受意识的效果类似于自我面部刺激。我们的发现将身体自我和内感受之间以前观察到的相互作用扩展到自我的更抽象的无模态表示。
