"If there is anything about your “self” of which you can be sure, it is that it is anchored in your own body and yours alone. The person you experience as “you” is here and now and nowhere else."
Under certain circumstances, however, the statement mentioned above can be questioned.
Check out this interesting article by V.S.Ramachandran "Hey, Is that Me over There?"
Changes in the front parietal lobe of your brain can actually cause the sensation of disembodiment creating an "out-of-body" experience. It is amazing to note that in such cases you can actually see yourself doing things and not feel physically anything at all as would be the case when you watch another person in front of you. There are also these interesting conditions of several patients described in the article where it is observed that damage to this part of the brain, depending upon the extent and region of damage, creates different illusions.
One of the more fascinating illusions is the description of a patient who actually believed to have a twin attached to his body on his left-hand side who mimicked his actions with a very slight time delay!! I can't really imagine how these conditions would actually psychologically effect the patients.....it must be difficult to live thinking and believing that you have a conjoined twin who is with you all the time, watching you, mimicking you......I also wonder in such cases if it is also reported that the "twin" talks to you??? But they do not mention any such thing in this article of course.
They mention that the sense of ownership of material things by humans is an extension of the sense of "self" ownership. Ironically, I can imagine "hating" my beloved car when it doesn't start or gasping when my favourite coffee mug breaks...but I cannot imagine myself, or anyone else for that matter, hating one's arm for being a communist!! (The condition described for a patient in the article).
Always a treat to read about and ponder over the mysteries of the working of "our" brain. :)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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will read it when I have some time tonight. In any case, anything by V S Ramachandran HAS to be read. :)
ReplyDeleteHe mentioned something related in Phantoms in the Brain. In fact, I think there was a whole chapter devoted to the concept of "self". As for the "out-of-body" experience thing, that seems to be one of the most important arguments in support of the "soul hypothesis". Apparently most people who have near-death experiences have certain things that are very common. The feeling of coming out of a dark tunnel into very bright light (which is commonly interpreted as a vision of God) and having an out-of-body experience where you see your dead body lying below you are two things that are supposed to be near-universal, I think. Add the fact that there are regions of the brain that, when stimulated, seem to give a profoundly mystical feeling and voila! we have another believer!
I have read that this type of out of body experiences happen to meditators and yogis, but dint know this is a research area where lot of progress has been done.
ReplyDeleteAs Rahul mentioned, soul hypothesis is one way of explaining why body is seen/felt as another object and myself is not my body but something else.
no, no. I didn't mean that "soul hypothesis" is one way of explaining it. I just meant that it is likely that out-of-body and near-death experiences are why people started thinking of souls in the first place. In the absence of a better understanding of mind/brain in earlier times, imagining a "soul" must have seemed to be an obvious explanatory construct.
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