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Specifying the self for cognitive neuroscience.

Kalina Christoff1, Diego Cosmelli, Dorothée Legrand

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, Canada.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|February 4, 2011
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study explores the neglected aspect of self-experience: agency. It proposes that self-specifying processes, crucial for distinguishing self from non-self, underpin this agency, even during demanding cognitive tasks.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Philosophy of Mind

Background:

  • Self-experience research often focuses on self-related processing (attributing features to the self).
  • The aspect of self-experience related to agency remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To highlight and define agency as a fundamental aspect of self-experience.
  • To propose a framework for understanding agency through self-specifying processes.

Main Methods:

  • Conceptual analysis of self-specifying processes.
  • Examination of sensorimotor integration and homeostatic regulation as paradigmatic cases.
  • Application of principles to cognitive control and emotion regulation.

Main Results:

  • Self-specifying processes implicitly define the self by creating a functional self/non-self distinction.
  • Cognitive control and emotion regulation are shown to be self-specifying processes.
  • Externally directed, attention-demanding tasks enhance, rather than suppress, the experience of being a cognitive-affective agent.

Conclusions:

  • Agency is a core component of self-experience, underpinned by self-specifying processes.
  • A new framework is proposed for understanding the neurocognitive basis of agency.
  • Future experimental directions are outlined to test the proposed framework.