Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Tagventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)

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Create yourself concept. Good looking young man drawing a picture, sketch of himself

Our Essential “I”ness … the Search for Its Address in the Brain

Does “I” — the first person singular — have or need a fixed address in the brain?
Amid claims for the Exact Spot in which selfhood lives and claims that the self is just an illusion, a real patient points inadvertently to the reality… Read More ›
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American staffordshire terrier dog with little kitten

Claim: A single brain region preserves our sense of self

No. We live in a strange world but it is not so strange as all that.

Neuroscientist Robert Martone tells us, A new study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience(SCAN), explores how a specific brain region helps knit together memories of the present and future self. Injury to that area leads to an impaired sense of identity. The region—called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—may produce a fundamental model of our self and place it in mental time. In doing so, this study suggests, it may be the source of our sense of self. Robert Martone, “How Our Brain Preserves Our Sense of Self” at Scientific American Paper. This is nonsense, of course. A kitten has a sense of self if you try holding on to its tail. But so does a fly Read More ›