TIME and CNN present an interesting video on Sarah Scantlin, a patient who suffers from severe brain damage. After being stuck in what was thought to be a vegetative state for 20 years, Sarah has recently regained her ability to speak. Scientists now think that Sarah was in a minimally conscious state, described as having a low level of awareness but conscious nonetheless, for the past two decades. It is noted that while some regions of Sarah’s brain are damaged, other regions are struggling to make new connections. (Image from the video.)

When asked whether she felt asleep or trapped for the last 20 years, Sarah reported having felt trapped. Amongst other challenges, Sarah seems to lack a concept of time, leaving her to believe that she is still 18 (the age at which she incurred her brain injury) when in fact she is now at the age of 40 years.

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A new issue of Personality and Individual Differences is out. It includes articles on

• self-injury in female vs. male psychiatric patients
• self-monitoring style and suggestibility
• thought suppression
• memory distortions in self-enhancers.

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 42, Issue 4, Pages 609-810 (March 2007)

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In what way does money change the way people think and act? According to a new study reported in Science, adding monetary motivation and reminders made people act more self-sufficient.

Interestingly, being reminded of the money did not even have to be done consciously. Priming had the same effect on self-sufficient behaviour versus requests for help from others.

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Depersonalization Disorder (DPD) is a dissociative disorder in which sufferers are affected by persistent feelings of depersonalization. The symptoms include a sense of automation, feeling a disconnection from one’s body, and difficulty relating oneself to reality. In a recent study Medford et al. reports that patients with DPD do not process emotionally salient material in the same way as healthy controls, in accordance with their subjective descriptions of reduced or absent emotional responses

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Alexithymia is a manifestation of a deficit in emotional cognition. People with this problem are mostly unaware of their feelings, or don’t know what they signify, and hence they rarely talk about their emotions or their emotional preferences; they operate in a very functional manner and rarely use imagination to focus their drives and motivations. Alexithymia refers to this distinctive cluster of characteristics.

In a recent study published in NeuroImage, a team of researchers demonstrate that “the skills involved in comprehending the self and others are inter-related and play an important role in emotion regulation”.

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In three new independent studies, researchers have deepened our understanding of the remarkable ability of some specialized areas of the brain to activate both in response to one’s own actions and in response to sensory cues (such as sight) of the same actions perpetrated by another individual.

This ability is thought to be based in the activity of so-called mirror neurons, which have been hypothesized to contribute to skills such as empathy, socialized behavior, and language acquisition. The new findings contribute to our understanding of how conceptually related instances of language and action, and sound and action, are linked in the brain, and how the brain distinguishes actions perpetrated by “self” and by “other.”

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Can language alter your personality? In this study by Ramírez-Esparza et al. results suggest that switching between language in Spanish and English bilinguals also changes personality traits.

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One building block of our sense of self is thought to be a body experience — a physical boundary that separates oneself from the environment. In a study published in Neuropsychologia Graziano & Cooke focus on two specific parts of the brain called the ventral intraparietal area and an area in the precentral gyrus. These areas, they suggest is relevant for “the construction of a margin of safety around the body and the selection and coordination of defensive behavior”.

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The concept of identity theft assumes an entirely new meaning for people with brain injuries that rob them of their sense of self—the unspoken certainty that one exists as a person in a flesh—bounded body with a unique set of life experiences and relationships.

We link to the full article by Bruce Bower in Science News Online.

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A recent meta-analysis by Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer published in Psychological Bulletin demonstrate that personality traits change over time. Some things that change over time is our social interactions, they find, and our emotional stability. It would be most interesting to see how these findings relate to our normal sense of self, i.e. our feeling that we are the same person over time.

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The study of how self-awareness relates to the structures and functions of the brain has taken many approaches. Studies have identified contributions from the parietal lobes in self-other distinction and body space, while other structures such as the left frontal lobe is implicated in inner speech.

In a new study on a split-brain patient Uddin et al. demonstrate how the two hemispheres make different contributions to self-awareness.

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Many of the claims for the special status of self-related processing are premature given the evidence and that the various self-related research programs do not seem to be illuminating a unitary, common system, despite individuals’ subjective experience of a unified self

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In Brain & Cognition, Brian Levine argues that the emergence of autobiographical recollection at around age four coincides with the timing of prefrontal regressive cortical and progressive white matter changes.

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Response to Thomas Clark, “Is there an observing Self?” SCR, 2004

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Imagine that scientists have been successful at designing a drug that “freezes” brain areas producing our internal monologue. After taking the drug you can’t talk to yourself anymore. Every other mental activity is fine, but it’s now total silence in your head. Not a word. What would happen? What would it be like?

Of course, such a pharmacological agent doesn’t exist. Actually, we don’t need it. Some unfortunate people suffer from brain damage that selectively interrupts inner speech. It’s as if they were under the influence of this imaginary drug. Scott Moss, a psychologist who was victim of a stroke, lost the ability to use language.

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When we become self-aware we see who we are and what we would like to be. What do we do? Do we change who we are? Or do we escape self-awareness by watching TV—or worst, by drinking alcohol, doing drugs, or committing suicide?

Past ideas about self-evaluation

Self-awareness represents the capacity to become the object of our own attention and to observe our personal characteristics. Early research conducted in the 70’s indicated that when we become self-aware we automatically compare what we perceive about ourselves (the “real” self) with what we ultimately would want to become (personal standards, or the “ideal” self).Let me use a simple example to illustrate this self-evaluation process. If you stand in front of a mirror (thus you are self-aware), chances are you will be critical of your reflected image: you will compare what you see (real self) to a mental representation (standard) of your ideal physical appearance. Like most of us you will probably identify some physical feature you do not like—there will be a discrepancy, and this will produce discomfort. Then psychological mechanisms will be activated to strategically eliminate negative emotions. The initial reaction is to simply escape self-awareness by avoiding whatever is causing it—the mirror in my example. But obviously people cannot evade mirrors forever—so eventually you will have to face reality and try to reduce the discrepancy between the real self and the ideal self. How? Either by directly modifying the real self (a haircut or a diet might do it) or by changing the ideal self (you could lower your expectations about your looks).

[The same self-evaluation sequence applies to any other self-dimension: behaviors, attitudes, emotions, values, thoughts, sensations, etc. See Diagram A for an example pertaining to emotions, e.g., jealousy.]

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Are you in control of your faculties? When you suddenly are in a bad mood, do you really know why?

Why you can be in a bad mood without knowing why

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the early psychoanalysts, once said that just as we cannot see stars in daytime because it is too bright, dreams never stop when we are awake; we just cannot see them. In the same manner, the core hypothesis of Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory was that most mental activity is unconscious. But scientific evidence on this issue has been rather sparse.

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