Abstract
To understand the cerebral organization of self we must start with how one’s own body is represented in the brain.
Whatever the ultimate solution to the problem
of consciousness, it seems likely that it will
be multifaceted, perhaps breaking apart in
ways we have not yet begun to think about
M. Gazzaniga (ed.) (2000), p. 1355.
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Notes
- 1.
Bernstein’s organizational model has already been expanded to include the LH–RH dimension and the symbolic (supra-modal) level (Glezerman & Balkoski, 1999).
- 2.
I do not include here a description of the thalamic level of one’s internal space and the sensory-motor level of the external spatial field’s contributions to LH self. Analysis of patients with unilateral brain lesions suggest that the RH represents the sensory body-space, while the LH is responsible for knowing the essential features of body parts rather than their spatial image (Cutting, 1990). Thus, it seems the thalamic level does not play a significant role in the LH self. As to the sensory-motor level, the somatosensory homunculus is the body image of this level; the meaning of this grossly distorted body image is not the body itself but its sensibility to external stimuli (recall that this level is completely extraverted).
- 3.
At the gnostic-praxic level, functional signs characterize the object itself but do not relate the object to other objects. Instead, the functional signs are indirectly connected with situations in which the function (action) is performed. This means that social relation at the gnostic-praxic level is to act similarly (together) in certain situations, but it is not based on an internal connection (sharing common categorical signs).
- 4.
One’s memory of emotionally significant objects and events.
- 5.
An illustration of one such patterned response involves neurons in the ventrolateral medulla that defend against low blood pressure (BP). These neurons receive information from baroreceptors that monitor vascular wall stretch. If BP falls, the reduced input from baroreceptors causes cardiovagal motor neurons to slow vagal firing, thereby increasing heart rate (parasympathetic response). There is also reduced excitation of inhibitory interneurons connected to neurons that regulate vasoconstriction tone. As a result, there is an increase in vasoconstriction tone (sympathetic response). Still other neurons in the ventrolateral medulla respond to a fall in baroreceptors’ input by conveying this information to the brain area related to vasopressin secretion. Release of vasopressin increases fluid retention and causes vasoconstriction (endocrine response). Saper (2002) emphasizes that this pattern of response is intrinsic to the connections of the baroresponsive neurons in the ventrolateral medulla.
- 6.
Described in detail in Chap. 7.
- 7.
A computerized morphing procedure was used to merge the target face with an unknown control face, so that the presented visual stimuli were sufficiently novel to prevent habituation yet were easily recognizable (Kircher et al., 2001).
- 8.
Both face and voice expressions in autism have individual features connected with the inner rhythm of the thalamic level. Recall the savants’ enigmatic expressions during drawing or manipulating with numbers (Sacks, 1995; Selfe, 1977) and the data about individual-specific rhythmical characteristics of voiced laughter in autism (Hudenko, Stone, & Bachrowski, 2009).
- 9.
For the original description of this neuropsychiatric model of RH self, see Cerebral Organization of the Self and Schizophrenia, in: Glezerman, T. and Balkoski, V. Language, Thought and the Brain 1999, 250–259.
- 10.
The MD is the associative thalamic nucleus that so heavily and distinctly projects to the prefrontal cortex, the latter being defined as the cortical territory of MD projection (Fuster, 1985). It may be the most important subcortical nucleus of the human brain, yet little is known about its function (Jones, 2008). It has been suggested that in this nucleus somatic impulses are blended with feeling tone (Malcolm, Carpenter, & Sutin, 1983).
- 11.
Hence it is clearly not the RH that gives us a sense of being one, individual “I.”
- 12.
The word moral in Webster’s Dictionary is defined as “of or relating to principles of right or wrong in behavior; capable of right or wrong action.” Moral then implies conformity to established sanctional codes or accepted notions of right and wrong. These definitions relate to the LH processing. I do not think the word moral can be used when speaking about RH processes, including value as a primary experience.
- 13.
From THINKING IN PICTURES by Temple Grandin, copyright © 1995, 2006 by Temple Grandin. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
- 14.
Actually, she is referring here to mostly kinesthetic, not tactile, sensation.
- 15.
I once had a schizophrenic patient, D.A., who told me of a snake inside the wall of her apartment. When asked how, if she does not see it, she knows it is a snake, the patient replied: “You can hear them moving, turning around inside the wall [showed with the spiral movements of her hand], you hear crunching and biting through the cement…movement started in the wall…I could hear the wall shifting…noise shuffling.” When asked whether she actually saw the wall moving, she denied it: “It’s within the wall, as though a large living thing in the wall moving, turning.” She went on: “[i]t is a white anaconda, it can swallow a cow… I don’t want to be swallowed by a snake, come out of a snake…it is a certain look when you are eaten by the snake, you don’t want to come out of a snake, very small bones.” We can see the patient’s metaphor conveys a physical, kinesthetic experience. She projects such feelings from the ‘wall’ of her body to the wall of her building (this patient was a real estate agent before she got ill). The patient concluded our conversation with a delusional interpretation: “The building should be inspected… What I am saying, every building should be inspected, it is just safer.”
- 16.
Kretschmer’s two-dimensional theory of emotion is described in more detail in Chap. 10.
- 17.
Jung argued for the deep intrinsic nature of his personality types: “The two types are so different and present such a striking contrast that their existence becomes quite obvious even to the layman once it has been pointed out. Everyone knows those reserved, inscrutable, rather shy people who form the strongest possible contrast to the open, sociable, jovial, or at least friendly and approachable characters who are on good terms with everybody, or quarrel with everybody, but always relate to them in some way and in turn are affected by them. One is naturally inclined, at first, to regard such differences as mere idiosyncrasies of character peculiar to individuals. But anyone with a thorough knowledge of human nature will soon discover that the contrast is by no means a matter of isolated individual instances but of typical attitudes which are far more common than one with limited psychological experience would assume…it is a fundamental contrast, sometimes quite clear, sometimes obscured, but always apparent when one is dealing with individuals whose personality is in any way pronounced. Such people are found not merely among the educated, but in all ranks of society…. Such a widespread distribution could hardly have come about if it were merely a question of a conscious and deliberate choice of attitude. In that case, one would surely find one particular attitude in one particular class of people linked together by a common education and background and localized accordingly. But that is not so at all; on the contrary, the types seem to be distributed quite at random. In the same family one child is introverted, the other extraverted” (Jung, 1971, p. 330).
- 18.
As noted before, Stephen was found to have outstanding musical abilities after he was already accomplished in drawing. We may now guess why from an early age he was attracted to drawing buildings: he lived in London, and so architecture was readily available to him.
- 19.
- 20.
From AN ANTHROPOLOGIST ON MARS by Oliver Sacks, copyright © 1995 by Oliver Sacks. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
- 21.
Recall that when his family returned to a Pontito destroyed by war, 10-year-old Franco promised his mother, “I shall make Pontito again for you, I shall create it again for you.”
- 22.
Imagine what this means for autists—what freedom! No dependency on the object, no ego struggle, no personal emotional bias, no stress of competition, no jealousy. What a vacuum! A piano playing without the pianist. A blind brightness.
- 23.
From a neuropsychological point of view, Monet is saying to forget the whatness of a thing.
- 24.
From Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams—His Art and His Textiles. Exhibition of Metropolitan Museum of Art (2005).
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Glezerman, T.B. (2013). Autistic Persons’ Sense of Self (Cerebral Organization of Self and Autism). In: Autism and the Brain. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4112-0_8
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