Where Does Your Sense of Self Come From? A Scientific Look | Anil Ananthaswamy | TED

Summary

This script explores the concept of the self, highlighting its constructed nature through various conditions such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and xenomelia. It discusses the 'narrative self,' the sense of ownership over our bodies, and the sense of agency in actions. The speaker emphasizes that our self-perception is not always a reflection of reality, challenging us to consider the 'experiencing I' and whether it persists after bodily death. The talk concludes by advocating empathy for those with altered selves and the importance of understanding the self's constructed nature.

Takeaways

• 🧠 Altered sense of self: People with schizophrenia can experience changes in their sense of self, feeling as if their identity and boundaries are shifting.
• 🤔 The self is not as real as it seems: The concept of self is complex and not as permanent or unchanging as we might think, with conditions like Alzheimer's impacting our narrative self.
• 📚 Our identity is a story: We often define ourselves through personal narratives, which are influenced by our experiences and memories.
• 👵 Alzheimer's and memory: Alzheimer's disease disrupts the formation of short-term memory, affecting the growth of our personal narratives and eventually eroding long-term memories.
• 🤲 Xenomelia and body ownership: The condition xenomelia challenges our sense of ownership over our body parts, indicating that this feeling is a mental construction that can go awry.
• 🤹‍♂️ Schizophrenia and agency: Schizophrenia can disrupt the sense of agency, where individuals may act without feeling like they are the initiator of their actions.
• 🌐 Out-of-body experiences: These phenomena suggest that our feeling of being embodied is also a construct of the brain that can be altered.
• 🤷‍♀️ The illusion of self: The self, as experienced, might be an illusion or a construction without a constructor, a topic of ongoing philosophical and scientific debate.
• 🕊️ Liberation and empathy: Understanding the constructed nature of the self can be liberating, and it should foster empathy towards those with altered selves.
• 🧘‍♂️ The enduring quest for self: The exploration of self, from ancient meditation practices to modern neuroscience, highlights the enduring human quest to understand our sense of self.

Q & A

What is the term used to describe a condition where individuals feel their sense of self is changing and their body boundaries become nebulous?

The term used is 'altered sense of self', which refers to a change in the perception of one's own identity and body boundaries.

How does Alzheimer's disease impact the narrative self according to the script?

Alzheimer's disease initially affects short-term memory, impairing the formation of new episodes in one's narrative. As the disease progresses, it can destroy long-term memories, leading to a scrambled narrative and eventually the loss of the narrative self.

What is the significance of the narrative self in the context of Alzheimer's disease?

The narrative self, which is the story we tell about ourselves, is significantly impacted by Alzheimer's disease as it disrupts the brain's ability to form and retain memories, which are the building blocks of our personal narratives.

What is xenomelia, and how does it challenge our sense of ownership of our body parts?

Xenomelia, also known as foreign limb syndrome, is a condition where individuals feel as if a part of their body does not belong to them. This challenges the intuitive sense of ownership we have over our body parts, suggesting that this sense is a construct that can be disrupted.

How does the script describe the sense of agency and its potential disruption in individuals with schizophrenia?

The script describes the sense of agency as the feeling that one is the agent of their actions. In individuals with schizophrenia, this sense can be disrupted, leading to actions being performed without the accompanying feeling of agency.

What is the significance of out-of-body experiences in understanding the construction of our sense of embodiment?

Out-of-body experiences, where individuals feel as if they are observing their body from an external perspective, suggest that the feeling of being embodied is a construction of the brain that can be altered, indicating that our normal in-body experience is also a brain-generated construct.

What philosophical implication does the script suggest regarding the self?

The script suggests that the self, including the narrative self, sense of ownership, and sense of agency, is not as solid and unchanging as it seems but is a construction that can be disrupted, implying that the self might be an illusion.

How does the script propose that understanding the constructed nature of the self might affect our relationship with our own stories?

The script proposes that recognizing the self as a construction might lead us to hold onto our stories less tightly, potentially allowing us to let go of rigid self-concepts and embrace change and new perspectives.

What role does empathy play in the script's discussion of altered selves?

Empathy is crucial in understanding and supporting those with altered selves. The script suggests that recognizing the fragility and variability of the self's construction can foster empathy towards those whose sense of self is challenged by conditions or circumstances.

What is the script's stance on the permanence of the experiencing 'I' or self after the body is gone?

The script suggests that the experiencing 'I' or self likely has no reality outside of the brain and body and will not persist after the body is gone, indicating a materialistic view of the self.

How does the script encourage us to view altered selves?

The script encourages us to view altered selves not as deficits or lacks but as different ways of being, and it highlights the importance of confronting the self's constructed nature to better understand the self for all.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Altered Selves and the Narrative Self

The speaker begins by discussing their encounters with individuals who have experienced schizophrenia, leading to an altered sense of self. They emphasize that this altered self is different, not deficient, and can be challenging. Through conversations with various experts, the speaker comes to understand that our sense of self is not as solid as it seems. The self is described as slippery and often defined by our personal narratives, which can be disrupted by conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's affects memory, which in turn disrupts the formation of our life stories, showing that our sense of self is constructed and can be altered.

05:02

🤲 The Illusion of Body Ownership and Agency

The speaker explores the concept of body ownership through the lens of xenomelia, a condition where individuals feel as if a part of their body does not belong to them. This is contrasted with phantom limb syndrome, where amputees feel a presence of a limb that is no longer there. The speaker discusses the sense of agency, the feeling that we are the initiators of our actions, and how this can be compromised in conditions like schizophrenia. These examples illustrate that our sense of ownership over our bodies and our sense of agency are constructs of the brain that can malfunction, leading to altered perceptions of our physical selves.

10:07

🕊️ Embracing the Constructed Nature of the Self

In the final paragraph, the speaker reflects on the implications of the constructed nature of the self. They suggest that understanding our narratives and bodily experiences as constructs can be liberating, allowing us to let go of rigid self-concepts. However, they acknowledge the challenge of this task, as the self that is letting go is also the self that needs to change. The speaker calls for empathy towards those with altered selves and appreciation for the resilience and fragility of our sense of self. They conclude by celebrating the efforts of individuals who confront the constructed nature of the self, contributing to a broader understanding of human identity.

Keywords

💡Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder characterized by disruptions in thought processes and perceptions. In the context of the video, it is used to illustrate the concept of an altered sense of self, where individuals may feel detached from their own bodies or actions. The script mentions how individuals with schizophrenia might not always feel like the agent of their actions, highlighting the constructed nature of our sense of agency.

💡Altered sense of self

An altered sense of self refers to changes in an individual's perception of their identity, body, or mind. The video discusses this concept through the experiences of people with schizophrenia and how their sense of self can become porous or nebulous. This term is central to the video's exploration of the fluidity and constructed nature of self-perception.

💡Narrative self

The narrative self is the concept that our sense of self is constructed through the stories we tell about ourselves and our experiences. The video uses Alzheimer's disease as an example to illustrate how the narrative self can be disrupted, as the disease affects memory and the ability to form a coherent personal narrative.

💡Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that causes memory loss and cognitive decline. In the video, it serves as a poignant example of how the narrative self can be compromised, as the disease impairs the formation of short-term memory, which is crucial for the ongoing creation of personal stories.

💡Xenomelia

Xenomelia, also known as foreign limb syndrome, is a rare condition where individuals feel as if a limb or part of their body does not belong to them. The video uses this condition to discuss the constructed nature of our sense of ownership over our body parts, showing that this sense can be disrupted, leading to a distorted perception of one's own body.

💡Sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to the feeling that one is the initiator or cause of an action. The video explains that this sense can be absent in individuals with schizophrenia, who might perform actions without feeling like they are the agent of those actions, thus challenging the stability of our perceived control over our bodies.

💡Out-of-body experience

An out-of-body experience is a phenomenon where individuals feel as if they are observing themselves from an external perspective, often described as being outside of their physical body. The video suggests that such experiences, if considered as misfirings of brain processes, imply that the normal in-body experience is also a construction of the brain.

💡Empathetic

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. The video concludes by advocating for empathy towards those who experience altered senses of self, recognizing the fragility and variability of our self-constructs and the courage it takes to confront these altered states.

💡Theologians and philosophers

Theologians and philosophers are mentioned in the video as individuals who have long pondered the nature of the self. Their perspectives are used to frame the discussion on the self as an illusion, suggesting that the self, as we perceive it, is a construct rather than a fixed entity.

💡Letting go

Letting go, as discussed in the video, refers to the idea that recognizing the constructed nature of our self might allow us to hold our personal narratives and identities with less rigidity. It suggests a potential liberation from the constraints of our self-imposed stories, although it acknowledges the paradox that the act of letting go is itself part of the self that must be released.

💡Bodily self

The bodily self refers to the aspect of our self that is associated with our physical body and its sensations. The video explores how our sense of ownership and embodiment is not as innate as it might seem, using conditions like xenomelia and out-of-body experiences to illustrate how these sensations can be disrupted, challenging our assumptions about the stability of our bodily self.

Highlights

The experience of schizophrenia can alter an individual's sense of self, making them feel as if their identity and boundaries are changing.

Meeting with individuals living with altered senses of self reveals that the self is not as fixed as it seems.

The self is often perceived as solid and unchanging, yet it can be examined and questioned for its reality.

Our identities are often expressed through stories we tell about ourselves, which we consider to be sacred.

Alzheimer's disease disrupts the narrative self by affecting short-term memory and the formation of long-term episodic memory.

In mid-stage Alzheimer's, individuals may recount their life stories with inaccuracies due to memory impairments.

The narrative self, as described by philosophers, is a construction of the brain and body that can be disrupted by diseases like Alzheimer's.

Xenomelia, or foreign limb syndrome, is a condition where individuals feel as if a part of their body does not belong to them.

The sense of ownership over our body parts is a construction that can malfunction, as seen in xenomelia.

Schizophrenia can affect the sense of agency, where individuals may not feel they are the agents of their own actions.

Out-of-body experiences suggest that the feeling of being embodied is a construction that can be altered.

The self is not always experiencing undeniable truths about our bodies and stories; these can be illusions.

The debate on the experiencing 'I' in 'Who am I?' questions the persistence of this experience beyond physical existence.

The self may have no reality outside of the brain and body, and the experiencing 'I' might not persist after death.

Understanding the constructed nature of our narratives can lead to a more empathetic view towards those with altered selves.

Altered selves should be seen as different ways of being, not as deficits or lacks, and can help us understand the self more deeply.

The processes that give rise to our sense of self are both robust and fragile, capable of cracking and requiring empathy and understanding.

Transcripts

About a decade ago,

I met someone who had experienced a few episodes of schizophrenia.

They had felt that their sense of self,

of what it feels like to be them,

changing somewhat.

The boundaries of their body began to feel a bit nebulous.

Even their psychological self felt a bit porous at times.

They were experiencing what could be called an altered sense of self.

Over the years, I met many such brave and insightful people

who shared what it's like to live with their altered selves.

And by "altered," I mean "different,"

not "deficient,"

while acknowledging that coping with altered selves

can be a struggle at times.

So speaking with them,

and with theologians, philosophers, neuroscientists,

I came to understand that this self that each one of us takes oneself to be

is not as real as it seems.

The self is a slippery subject.

We all intuitively know what it means.

It’s there when we wake up.

It disappears when we fall asleep.

It reappears in our dreams.

It's what makes us who we are.

It seems solid, unchanging, permanent.

And yet, we can examine aspects of the self

that seem real to us,

and ask, “Just how real are they?”

Take, for instance, the question "Who am I?"

The most likely answer you will get or give to such a question

will be in the form of a story.

We tell others -- and indeed, ourselves -- stories about who we are.

We take our stories to be sacrosanct.

We are our stories.

But a condition that most of us, sadly, will be familiar with --

Alzheimer's disease --

tells us something quite different.

Alzheimer's begins by affecting short-term memory.

Think about what that does to someone's story.

In order for our stories to form, to grow,

something that just happens to us has to first enter short-term memory,

and then, get incorporated

into what's called long-term episodic memory.

It has to become an episode in our narrative.

But what if the experience doesn't even enter short-term memory?

That's exactly what Alzheimer's does.

In the beginning,

Alzheimer's impairs the formation of short-term memory.

It impairs the growth of the narrative.

It's as if our stories begin stalling upon the onset of the disease.

Eventually, Alzheimer's eats away at all the long-term memories.

So if you were to meet someone with mid-stage Alzheimer's,

they will likely be able to tell you stories about who they are.

But if you know their real stories,

you'll be able to tell that they sometimes scramble up their narrative,

that they sometimes mix up the sequence of episodes from their lives.

It's as if they are recalling their own stories

in ways that are not quite accurate.

It's important, at this stage,

to realize that there is still a person experiencing that scrambled narrative.

Sadly, Alzheimer's goes on to destroy one's narrative,

and so much more.

And towards the end,

it's unclear whether there is still someone experiencing something,

because the person cannot communicate verbally anymore.

And yet,

Alzheimer's tells us that these stories that we take ourselves to be,

what philosophers call the “narrative self,”

these are spun by the brain and body.

They are constructions.

Sometimes, the constructions are disrupted, even destroyed.

And while that is horrific for the person experiencing it,

and for their caregivers,

it is nonetheless a window

onto the constructed nature of our narrative self.

And when the construction goes wrong,

we perceive our own stories in ways that are not quite real.

From the narrative self, let's talk about our body.

Let's take a very basic aspect of our bodily self.

This feeling we all have,

that we are owners of our body and body parts,

that our bodies and body parts belong to us.

It seems such a strange thing to think that it could even be otherwise.

If I were to ask you, "Does your hand belong to you?"

you're going to say, "Of course it does. What a foolish question."

But not everyone would agree.

Early on in my research,

a neuropsychologist alerted me to a condition called xenomelia,

or foreign limb syndrome.

You may have heard of something called phantom limb syndrome,

in which people who have had an amputation

feel the presence of that limb, sometimes.

Xenomelia is somewhat of an opposite condition,

where people feel like some part of their body --

usually the extremities, their hands or legs --

don't belong to them.

So this neuropsychologist talked of phantom limb syndrome

as animation without incarnation.

So the limb is gone, it's not incarnate anymore,

but it's animated in your mind.

And he talked of xenomelia as incarnation without animation.

So the limb is present, healthy even, incarnate,

and yet, in your own mind, it feels like it doesn't belong to you.

So in xenomelia,

the brain and bodily processes

that give rise to our sense of ownership of our body parts,

they're misfiring, so to speak,

and the consequences can be serious.

People with xenomelia will sometimes take extreme measures

to get rid of, to amputate their foreign-seeming body parts.

From the perspective of the self, though,

xenomelia is telling us something very profound.

It's telling us that something as basic

as the sense of ownership of our own body parts

is a construction.

And sometimes, the construction goes wrong,

and we perceive our own bodies in ways that are not quite real.

Let's take another aspect of our bodily self.

It's called the sense of agency.

So when I do something like pick up a cup,

I have this implicit feeling that I am the agent of that action,

that I have willed that action into existence.

That feeling is the sense of agency.

But someone with schizophrenia may not have that feeling, always.

Someone with schizophrenia

might do something and not feel like they are the agent of that action.

So schizophrenia tells us

that it is possible to be someone who does something

but doesn't have an accompanying sense of agency.

So just like the narrative self and the sense of ownership of body parts,

the sense of agency is also a construction,

and it, too, can fail.

So you can see where this is going.

Let me take one more example to drive home this point.

Let's talk of what it feels to be a body here and now.

Not the feeling of being a story,

but the feeling of being a body in the present moment.

Psychologists estimate

that about five percent of the general population

will, at some point in their lives, have an out-of-body experience.

Let's assume that all of us right now are having an in-body experience.

(Laughter)

But what that means is having this feeling of being in a body,

being anchored to a body,

occupying a certain volume of space

and looking at the world from behind our eyes.

But if you are having an out-of-body experience,

you could possibly be feeling that you're up near the ceiling,

looking down at your own body sitting in the chair below.

People do report such experiences,

and mild versions of this have been replicated in labs.

But if you think, like I do,

that out-of-body experiences are the outcome of brain processes

that are misfiring,

then it stands to reason that the experience of being in-body,

of being embodied,

is itself a construction,

and that, too, can come apart.

So what are these experiences of altered selves telling us?

They're telling us

that just about everything we take to be real

about ourselves --

"real" in the sense that we think we are always experiencing

undeniable truths about our bodies, our stories --

well, that's just not the case.

So when theologians and philosophers tell us that the self is an illusion,

this is partly what they mean.

You may have realized by now that there still remains the question

of who or what is doing the experiencing,

even in the case of altered selves.

This experiencing “I” in the question “Who am I?”

is at the heart of the debate about the self.

This experiencing “I” doesn’t go away

if one or a few aspects of the self are disrupted.

But what if all of the aspects of the self that comprise us

were to be disrupted?

Would the experiencing “I” disappear?

We don't have a satisfactory answer to that question, yet.

It’s possible that the experiencing “I” is also an illusion,

in the sense of being a construction,

a construction without a constructor.

That debate, however, is somewhat unresolved.

Despite such doubts, I, personally -- whatever I am --

think that the self has no reality outside of the brain and body.

I think that the experiencing “I” will not persist after the body is gone.

So what does one make of such knowledge?

Well, firstly, these ideas will feel liberating to some

and might sit heavily upon others.

Regardless, I think we can all attend to the stories that we think we are.

Our feelings and emotions are modulated by our stories,

and in turn, our feelings and emotions become part of our stories.

And our stories, our narratives, are not just cognitive --

they live in our bodies,

and our bodies structure and shape our stories.

So knowing all this,

recognizing the constructive nature of it all,

maybe we can hold on less tightly to our stories.

Maybe we can learn to let go.

But that's easier said than done,

because the thing that is doing the letting go

is also the thing that has to be let go of.

(Laughter)

Maybe we can just marvel at the efforts of people over millennia,

from the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree

to the modern philosopher and neuroscientist

who has asked themselves the question "Who am I?"

But most of all,

I think we owe a debt to those amongst us

who bravely bear witness to our altered selves --

whether we do so voluntarily,

like monks and nuns do when they meditate,

or whether it's brought upon us by biology and circumstance.

There is something remarkably robust

about the processes that give rise to the totality of our sense of self.

But there's something frighteningly fragile about them too.

They can crack.

And any one of us, at any time in our lives,

may have to confront such cracks.

And that knowledge, I believe, should make us empathetic

towards those of us dealing with altered selves.

But I also believe that altered selves

should not be seen as the outcome of deficits,

or as the outcome of a lack of attributes considered normal.

They are different ways of being,

and it's the willingness of some of us to confront the self's constructed nature

that is helping make sense of the self for all of us.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.