Although early emotion theorists posited that bodily changes contribute to emotion, the primary view in affective science over the last century has been that emotions produce bodily changes. Recent findings from physiology, neuroscience, and neuropsychology support the early intuition that body representations can help constitute emotion. These findings are consistent with the modern psychological constructionist hypothesis that emotions emerge when representations of bodily changes are conceptualized as an instance of emotion. We begin by introducing the psychological constructionist approach to emotion. (...) With Schachter as inspiration, we next examine how embodied representations contribute to affective states, and ultimately emotion, with inflammation as a key example. We close by looking forward to future research on how body representations contribute to human experience. (shrink)

Objects which a human agent controls by efferent activities can be perceived by the agent as belonging to his or her body. This suggests that what an agent counts as “body” is plastic, depending on what she or he controls. Yet there are possible limitations for such momentary plasticity. One of these limitations is that sensations stemming from the body and sensations stemming from objects outside the body are not integrated if they do not sufficiently “match”. What “matches” and what (...) does not is conceivably determined by long–term experience with the perceptual changes that body movements typically produce. Children have accumulated less sensorimotor experience than adults have. Consequently, they express higher flexibility to integrate body-internal and body-external signals, independent of their “match” as suggested by rubber hand illusion studies. However, children’s motor performance in tool use is more affected by mismatching body-internal and body-external action effects than that of adults, possibly because of less developed means to overcome such mismatches. We review research on perception-action interactions, multisensory integration, and developmental psychology to build bridges between these research fields. By doing so, we account for the flexibility of the sense of body ownership for actively controlled events and its development through ontogeny. This gives us the opportunity to validate the suggested mechanisms for generating ownership by investigating their effects in still developing and incomplete stages in children. We suggest testable predictions for future studies investigating both body ownership and motor skills throughout the lifespan. (shrink)

Why does performing certain tasks cause the aversive experience of mental effort and concomitant deterioration in task performance? One explanation posits a physical resource that is depleted over time. We propose an alternative explanation that centers on mental representations of the costs and benefits associated with task performance. Specifically, certain computational mechanisms, especially those associated with executive function, can be deployed for only a limited number of simultaneous tasks at any given moment. Consequently, the deployment of these computational mechanisms carries (...) an opportunity cost – that is, the next-best use to which these systems might be put. We argue that the phenomenology of effort can be understood as the felt output of these cost/benefit computations. In turn, the subjective experience of effort motivates reduced deployment of these computational mechanisms in the service of the present task. These opportunity cost representations, then, together with other cost/benefit calculations, determine effort expended and, everything else equal, result in performance reductions. In making our case for this position, we review alternative explanations for both the phenomenology of effort associated with these tasks and for performance reductions over time. Likewise, we review the broad range of relevant empirical results from across sub-disciplines, especially psychology and neuroscience. We hope that our proposal will help to build links among the diverse fields that have been addressing similar questions from different perspectives, and we emphasize ways in which alternative models might be empirically distinguished. (shrink)

In addition to active wake, emotions are generated and experienced in a variety of functionally different states such as those of sleep, during which external stimulation and cognitive control are lacking. The neural basis of emotions can be specified by regarding the multitude of emotion-related brain states, as well as the distinct neuro- and psychodynamic stages (generation and regulation) of emotional experience.

The processing, representation, and perception of bodily signals (interoception) plays an important role for human behavior. Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. Similarly, activation of interoceptive representations and meta-representations of bodily signals supporting interoceptive awareness are profoundly associated with emotional experience and cognitive functions. This article gives an overview over present findings and models on interoception and (...) mechanisms of embodiment and highlights its relevance for disorders that are suggested to represent a translation deficit of bodily states into subjective feelings and self-awareness. (shrink)

Traditionally, research on affordances and emotions follows two separate routes. For the first time, this article explicitly links the two phenomena by investigating whether, in a discrimination task, the motivational states induced by emotional images can modulate affordances-related motor response elicited by dangerous and neutral graspable objects. The results show faster RTs: for both neutral and dangerous objects with neutral images; for dangerous objects with pleasant images; for neutral objects with unpleasant images. Overall, these data support a significant effect of (...) emotions on affordances. The article also proposes a brain neural network underlying emotions and affordance interplay. (shrink)

Recently, a three-dimensional construct model for complex experiential Selfhood has been proposed (Fingelkurts et al., 2016b,c). According to this model, three specific subnets (or modules) of the brain self-referential network (SRN) are responsible for the manifestation of three aspects/features of the subjective sense of Selfhood. Follow up multiple studies established a tight relation between alterations in the functional integrity of the triad of SRN modules and related to them three aspects/features of the sense of self; however, the causality of this (...) relation is yet to be shown. In this article we approached the question of causality by exploring functional integrity within the three SRN modules that are thought to underlie the three phenomenal components of Selfhood while these components were manipulated mentally by experienced meditators in a controlled and independent manner. Participants were requested, in a block-randomised manner, to mentally induce states representing either increased (up-regulation) or decreased (down-regulation) sense of (a) witnessing agency (“Self”), or (b) body representational-emotional agency (“Me”), or (c) reflective/narrative agency (“I”), while their brain activity was recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). This EEG-data was complemented by first-person phenomenological reports and standardised questionnaires which focused on subjective contents of three aspects of Selfhood. The results of the study strengthen the case for a direct causative relationship between three phenomenological aspects of Selfhood and related to them three modules of the brain SRN. Furthermore, the putative integrative model of the dynamic interrelations among three modules of the SRN has been proposed. (shrink)

In spite of enormous recent interest in the neurobiology of the self, we currently have no global models of the brain that explain how its anatomical structure, connectivity, and physiological functioning create a unified self. In this article I present a triadic neurohierarchical model of the self that proposes that the self can be understood as the product of three hierarchical anatomical systems: The interoself system, the integrative self system, and the exterosensorimotor system. An analysis of these three systems and (...) their functional features indicates that the neural hierarchy possesses features of both non-nested and nested hierarchies that are necessary for the creation of a unified consciousness and self. These functional properties also make the central nervous system a biologically unique entity unlike anything else in nature. (shrink)

A common view in affective neuroscience considers emotions as a multifaceted phenomenon constituted by independent affective and motor components. Such dualistic connotation, obtained by rephrasing the classic Darwin and James’s theories of emotion, leads to the assumption that emotional expression is controlled by motor centers in the anterior cingulate, frontal operculum, and supplementary motor area, whereas emotional experience depends on interoceptive centers in the insula. Recent stimulation studies provide a different perspective. I will outline two sets of findings. First, affective (...) experiences can be elicited also following the stimulation of motor centers. Second, emotional expressions can be elicited by stimulating interoceptive regions. Echoing the original pragmatist theories of emotion, I will make a case for the notion that emotional experience emerges from the integration of sensory and motor signals, encoded in the same functional network. (shrink)

We become aware of our bodies interoceptively, by processing signals arising from within the body, and exteroceptively, by processing signals arising on or outside the body. Recent research highlights the importance of the interaction of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals in modulating bodily self-consciousness. The current study investigated the effect of social self-focus, manipulated via a video camera that was facing the participants and that was either switched on or off, on interoceptive sensitivity and on tactile perception ). The results indicated (...) a significant effect of self-focus on SSDT performance, but not on interoception. SSDT performance was not moderated by interoceptive sensitivity, although interoceptive sensitivity scores were positively correlated with false alarms, independently of self-focus. Together with previous research, our results suggest that self-focus may exert different effects on body perception depending on its mode . While interoception has been previously shown to be enhanced by private self-focus, the current study failed to find an effect of social self-focus on interoceptive sensitivity, instead demonstrating that social self-focus improves exteroceptive somatosensory processing. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition and consciousness offers a valuable alternative to the standard approaches dominant in the sciences of mind. As an embodied account, enactivism incorporates theoretical perspectives on the body from phenomenology, cognitive science, and biology, which provides a unique interpretation of embodiment with critical insight into the embodied nature of cognition and consciousness. Nonetheless, I argue that several revisions are required to make enactivism viable within the context of the sciences of mind. The enactive account of subjectivity (...) is problematic, in light of arguments developed in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later texts, because it is implicitly dualistic. I demonstrate that this implicit dualism can be resolved by incorporating the conceptual framework of flesh that Merleau-Ponty introduces in his later works. However, this new framework presents a challenge of understanding how body can break with world in experience. I provide a solution to this problem by way of developing revisions to the enactive account of cognition, which I argue is problematic in its generality. I offer a new interpretation of enactive cognition modelled on structural flexibility that overcomes the difficulties of the previous account. These revisions to enactive cognition provide a way of understanding how body can break with world, resulting in an account of the enactive body as expressing a massive integration of its different ways of being in the world, as cognitive, conscious, affective, and agentive. These revisions provide a more consistent and plausible articulation of the enactive approach that is more amenable to guiding the sciences of mind. (shrink)

Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for sociality, human inter-subjectivity (...) develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

Using theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concept and experimental evidence on the brain default mode network (DMN) that constitutes the neural signature of self-referential processes, we hypothesized that the anterior and posterior subnets comprising the DMN should show differences in their integrity as a function of meditation training. Functional connectivity within DMN and its subnets (measured by operational synchrony) has been measured in ten novice meditators using an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording in a pre-/post-meditation intervention design. We have found that while the (...) whole DMN was clearly suppressed, different subnets of DMN responded differently after 4 months of meditation training: The strength of EEG operational synchrony in the right and left posterior modules of the DMN decreased in resting post-meditation condition compared to a pre-meditation condition, whereas the frontal DMN module on the contrary exhibited an increase in the strength of EEG operational synchrony. These findings combined with published data on functional–anatomic heterogeneity within the DMN and on trait subjective experiences commonly found following meditation allow us to propose that the first-person perspective and the sense of agency (the witnessing observer) are presented by the frontal DMN module, while the posterior modules of the DMN are generally responsible for the experience of the continuity of ‘I’ as embodied and localized within bodily space. Significance of these findings is discussed. (shrink)

The neuropeptide oxytocin has been suggested to facilitate social cognition and behavior. Therefore, published literature mainly focuses on the study of OT in a social context or in relation to others. But how we think, act and feel in social situations might strongly depend on our own state of being – the self. Thus, the present three studies examine the effects of OT on self-related processing and cognition. The first study explores the idea that OT might decrease self-related information processing, (...) even when individuals are specifically exposed to being self-aware. We could show that public self-awareness was increased when participants were placed in front of a mirror. Moreover, in the placebo group, lower scores in self-esteem were associated with increased self-awareness. This was not the case in the OT group in which self-esteem was unrelated to self-awareness. The results suggest that OT might function as a buffer against the negative consequences of enhanced self-related processing. The second study of this dissertation explores OT’s effects on self-related processing in a more physiological approach. Participants were to conduct a heartbeat perception task in front of a mirror and we hypothesized OT to inhibit interoceptive awareness. Usually, people become more attuned to bodily responses in front of a mirror due to increased self-awareness. In line with the concept of de-individuation under OT, we could show that heartbeat accuracy, and thus interoceptive accuracy, was increased among participants under placebo who were placed in front of the mirror, but no such effect occurred after treatment with OT. The third study provides empirical evidence testing OT’s effect on situational self-awareness when attentional focus is shifted, either to external sensory perception or explicit self-related cognition, using a categorization vs. introspection task. The results suggest that situational self-awareness was reduced after OT treatment compared to placebo, when participants had previously been instructed to introspect about their feelings. In sum, all findings support the idea of OT being significantly involved in self-related processing and cognition by enhancing de-individuation. (shrink)

This work "cardiosensitivity, emotion processing and behavior" is concerned with the relevance of interoceptive sensitivity for emotion processing and behavioral control. The first part of the monograph elaborately outlines theoretical models underscoring the importance of somatic markers and bodily signals for feelings, emotion, decision making and behavior. Ongoing insights of emotion research and neuroanatomic fundamentals of emotion processing and visceroception are illustrated based on current neuroscientific results. In the second part of the work these models and findings provide a basis (...) for the examination of the relationship between interoceptive sensitivity and a) emotion processing using paradigms of EEG research, analyzing both the higher-order processing and the rapid, early processing of emotional and neutral, visual stimuli, and b) behavioral control of mental, emotional and physical stress, analyzing behavioral and physiological variables. The results of the studies demonstrated that interoceptive sensitivity is remarkably positively related to the intensity of both higher-order processing of emotional, visual stimuli and early, visual processing of rapidly presented emotional pictures at temporo-occipital brain regions. Behavioral and physiological data from the behavioral studies showed that persons with good interoceptive sensitivity demonstrate a more subtle and cautious behavioral self-control of mental, emotional as well as physical stress than persons with poor interoceptive sensitivity. The findings are discussed within the context of the described models by James and Damasio as well as topical findings from neuroscientific emotion research. Finally, the results are integrated within a detailed survey on future research on interoception. (shrink)