Besharati Sahba, Jenkinson Paul M, Kopelman Michael, Solms Mark, Moro Valentina, Fotopoulou Aikaterini
Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program, CIFAR, Toronto, Canada.
Institute for Social Neuroscience, Melbourne, Australia.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 Jun 6;170:108227. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108227. Epub 2022 Mar 29.
In recent decades, the research traditions of (first-person) embodied cognition and of (third-person) social cognition have approached the study of self-awareness with relative independence. However, neurological disorders of self-awareness offer a unifying perspective to empirically investigate the contribution of embodiment and social cognition to self-awareness. This study focused on a neuropsychological disorder of bodily self-awareness following right-hemisphere damage, namely anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP). A previous neuropsychological study has shown AHP patients, relative to neurological controls, to have a specific deficit in third-person perspective taking and allocentric stance (the other unrelated to the self) in higher order mentalizing tasks. However, no study has tested if verbal awareness of motor deficits is influenced by perspective-taking and centrism and identified the related anatomical correlates. Accordingly, two novel experiments were conducted with right-hemisphere stroke patients with (n = 17) and without AHP (n = 17) that targeted either their own (egocentric, experiment 1) or another stooge patients (allocentric, experiment 2) motor abilities from a first-or-third person perspective. In both experiments, neurological controls showed no significant difference in perspective-taking, suggesting that social cognition is not a necessary consequence of right-hemisphere damage. More specifically, experiment 1 found AHP patients more aware of their own motor paralysis (egocentric stance) when asked from a third compared to a first-person perspective, using both group level and individual level analysis. In experiment 2, AHP patients were less accurate than controls in making allocentric judgements about the stooge patient, but with only a trend towards significance and with no difference between perspectives. As predicted, deficits in egocentric and allocentric third-person perspective taking were associated with lesions in the middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal and supramarginal gyri, and white matter disconnections were more prominent with deficits in allocentricity. Behavioural and neuroimaging results demonstrate the intersecting relationship between bodily self-awareness and self-and-other-directed metacognition or mentalisation.
近几十年来，（第一人称）具身认知和（第三人称）社会认知的研究传统相对独立地开展了对自我意识的研究。然而，自我意识的神经障碍为实证研究具身性和社会认知对自我意识的贡献提供了一个统一的视角。本研究聚焦于右半球损伤后身体自我意识的一种神经心理障碍，即偏瘫失认症（AHP）。先前一项神经心理学研究表明，与神经对照组相比，AHP患者在高阶心理理论任务中，在第三人称视角采择和异心立场（与自我无关的他人）方面存在特定缺陷。然而，尚无研究测试运动缺陷的言语意识是否受视角采择和自我中心主义的影响，也未确定相关的解剖学关联。因此，针对有（n = 17）和无AHP（n = 17）的右半球中风患者进行了两项新实验，分别从第一人称或第三人称视角，针对他们自己（自我中心，实验1）或另一名假患者（异心，实验2）的运动能力。在这两项实验中，神经对照组在视角采择方面无显著差异，这表明社会认知并非右半球损伤的必然结果。更具体地说，实验1通过组水平和个体水平分析均发现，与第一人称视角相比，当从第三人称视角询问时，AHP患者对自己的运动麻痹（自我中心立场）更有意识。在实验2中，AHP患者在对假患者进行异心判断时比对照组更不准确，但仅具有显著趋势，且不同视角之间无差异。正如预期的那样，自我中心和异心第三人称视角采择的缺陷与额中回、颞上回和缘上回的病变相关，而异心缺陷时白质连接中断更为明显。行为和神经影像学结果证明了身体自我意识与自我及他人导向的元认知或心理理论之间的交叉关系。
