2007, Number 6
Self-awareness, its importance in clinic neurosciences
Salín-Pascual RJ
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 31
Page: 586-594
PDF size: 69.27 Kb.
ABSTRACT
Self-awareness is a kind of knowledge about consciousness, a kind of hyper attention that in not on all the time. This selfawareness is part of our evolution, so there are some neuro- anatomical structures that were evolved with that, mostly frontal lobes. There is some evidence that some areas of the brain are already activated ahead whichever behavior follows, and that could be observed also, with mere act of thinking about doing something or even what has been named intentionality. Since discovery of the slow negative electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, that is proceeding self-initiated movement. Self-awareness is a very complicated phenomenon that needs to be explained. Awareness is not equivalent to consciousness, but one must be conscious in order to be aware of our self. It can be said that a person could be conscious but without awareness, but always awareness has to be in conscious. Self-awareness may be defined as: the self being aware of itself. Selfawareness and conscious were evolved as part of evolution and this is the only principle that is going to be sustained here. Prediction is the main function of the brain, that is observed at both levels broadly at conscience level but and most important non-coincident level, in terms of that function at non conscious in the psychoanalytic way of talking, because is part of planning, and perform some of our activities. Natures give us some models for to understand diseases as well as some of the functions of our body. Autoscopy and Dysmorphophobia are two manifestations in which there are problems with self awareness. There is more neurological as well as psychiatric disorder in which self-awareness is stretch to its limits, for instance schizophrenia, autism, conversion disorders, just to name some of them. If brain functioning is going ahead of what the rest of the body is doing, what role play, after all the sensorial organization? It has been mentioned that perception is not a passive process, both at the reception of all these signals (Primary cortex areas), but also because the organisms participate with movements in other to focus de signal. All this aspects of sensorial activity has been named ENACTIVE approach. Because cerebral areas like premotor area is very active before any movement, so if a subject I moving ears, eyes muscles, or all the body, that give us an idea that there is a preconception about what kind of perception we are dealing ahead. So first point, brain is elaborating in ahead, an just contrast with the external information about the validity of what ii is seen. Perception is an active process, in which brain elaborate what “It” think should be goes there. The brain produces what we are listening, reading, feeling, and elaborate something inside that we are instructed to believe is external, which of course it exist but probably not exact as we think. Experimental blind is a very fascinating phenomenon. Those Autoscopy means exactly “To see my self”. An autoscopic phenomenon is the encountering of an image of oneself. The image may be hallucination; it may be an illusion, as when one takes a mirror image to be a person; or it may be a vivid fantasy. Most autoscopic phenomena, as the term implies, are primarily visual, but often other sensory modalities participate: the image may speak, or it may touch the subject. Narcolepsy is one of the sleep disorders in which autoscopy is common, either in the hallucination or in the sleep paralysis. Sleep in slow wave sleep (SWS), show us that the integrity of cerebral cortex it is very important. Tonnoni et al found that cerebral cortex was like patches of activity and non-activity in SWS. That support again that self awareness is only possible when cerebral cortex work like unity. Near death experience is another situation in which an autoscopy signal is observed. It has been proposed that REM sleep is trigger by some mechanism when person is about to pass away. In neuropsychiatry there are several examples about how there is a split between self-knowledge and consciousness. Schizophrenia, Anorexia Nervosa, Dimorphic Disorder, Obsessive- Compulsive disorder, an probably more.REFERENCES