Beyond consciousness of external reality: a "who" system for consciousness of action and self-consciousness.
This paper offers a framework for consciousness of internal reality. Recent PET experiments are reviewed, showing partial overlap of cortical activation during self-produced actions and actions observed from other people. This overlap suggests that representations for actions may be shared by several individuals, a situation which creates a potential problem for correctly attributing an action to its agent. The neural conditions for correct agency judgments are thus assigned a key role in self/other distinction and self-consciousness. A series of behavioral experiments that demonstrate, in normal subjects, the poor monitoring of action-related signals and the difficulty in recognizing self-produced actions are described. In patients presenting delusions, this difficulty dramatically increases and actions become systematically misattributed. These results point to schizophrenia and related disorders as a paradigmatic alteration of a "Who?" system for self-consciousness.
Georgieff
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Institut des Sciences Cognitives, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, France.
Jeannerod
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M
D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D003702:Delusions / Q000503:physiopathology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012649:Self Concept; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed