title: Mirror-touch synaesthesia: Difficulties inhibiting the other.
abstract: Individuals with mirror touch synaesthesia (MTS) experience touch on their own body when observing others being touched. A recent account proposes that such rare experiences could be linked to impairment in self-other representations. Here we tested participants with MTS on a battery of social cognition tests and found that compared to non-synaesthete controls, the MTS group showed impairment in imitation-inhibition but not in visual perspective taking or theory of mind. Although all of these socio-cognitive abilities rely on the control of self-other representations, they differ as to whether the self, or the other, should be preferentially represented. For imitation-inhibition, representations of the other should be inhibited and self-representations should be enhanced, whereas the opposite is true for visual perspective taking and theory of mind. These findings suggest that MTS is associated with a specific deficit in inhibiting representation of other individuals and shed light on the fractionability of processes underlying typical social cognition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK. Electronic address: i.santiesteban@bbk.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Idalmis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Santiesteban
authors.affiliation: MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bird
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tew
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Maria Cristina
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Cioffi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Banissy
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment; D000080311:Synesthesia; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055698:Touch Perception
keywords: Imitation inhibition; Mentalizing; Mirror-touch synaesthesia; Perspective taking; Self-other; Social cognition; Synaesthesia