Delineating self-other processes in social cognition: Insights from neuropsychology and brain stimulation

为了发展和维持对我们的幸福至关重要的持久的社会关系，人们不仅必须能够识别并与他人建立联系，而且还必须能够将自己的想法和感受与他人区分开来。这种区分自我和他人的过程很重要，例如，当分享另一个人的情感状态时--他人的情绪影响着自我的情绪(例如，你的悲伤让我感到悲伤)--以及当对处于困境中的人做出回应时，自我和他人的心理表征必须分开(例如，处于痛苦中的是你，而不是我；因此，我会试着安慰你)。如果区分自己和他人的能力受损，可能会导致个人痛苦，进而阻碍对需要帮助的人做出同理心反应的能力。这项建议中的实验试图更好地理解社会互动中自我-他者区别所涉及的过程，并将在三个汇聚的研究流中使用一系列行为和社会神经科学方法。第一项研究将评估患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)和镜面触觉通感(MTS)的个体的共情能力，这些个体在分享他人的情绪状态并对需要帮助的人做出适当的共情反应的情况下，观察自己的身体被触摸。这些研究的结果将更好地了解自闭症和MTS的社会损害水平，并可能为以下观点提供经验支持：自闭症患者本身并不缺乏同理心，相反，自我-他人区别受损可能会阻止他们对他人做出同理心反应。此外，这些发现还可以阐明自我-他人过程通常是如何运作的。第二个流派将使用非侵入性脑刺激来增强非典型组(MTS和ASD)和健康个体的自我-他者处理。最后，第三流将把同样的大脑刺激技术与神经成像结合起来，以便更好地了解大脑刺激如何影响参与自我他人加工的不同大脑区域之间的连接模式。STREAM 2和STREAM 3的发现将更好地洞察支持一系列社交能力的潜在认知和神经机制，包括移情他人、模仿他人的行为、控制模仿他人的倾向以及区分自己和他人的面孔。这一提议提供了一个独特的机会，让我们了解作为我们与他人互动能力基础的关键过程。尽管我们大多数人认为这种能力是理所当然的，但我们对这种能力是如何发生的知之甚少。此外，对于已知的社会障碍患者，如自闭症患者，在不同的社会背景下控制自我-他人表征的困难可能会对他们的个人、家庭和职业生活产生严重影响。因此，这些实验解决的问题对于发展社会互动的科学理论和在自我-他者过程已经崩溃的临床人群中设计未来的治疗干预都是重要的。

To develop and maintain the long-lasting social relationships crucial for our wellbeing, people must be able not only to identify and connect with others, but also to differentiate their own thoughts and feelings from those of other people. This process of distinguishing self from other (self-other distinction) is important, for example, when sharing the affective state of another person- where emotions of the other influence those of the self (e.g. your sadness makes me feel sad) - but also when responding to the person in distress, where mental representations of self and other must be kept separate (e.g. it is you who is in pain, not me; therefore I will try to comfort you). If the ability to distinguish self from other is impaired, this can result in personal distress, which in turn can hinder the ability to respond empathically to the person in need. The experiments in this proposal seek to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in self-other distinction within social interaction and will employ a range of behavioural and social neuroscience methods in three convergent streams of research. The first one will assess the empathic abilities of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and mirror-touch synaesthesia (MTS; individuals who experience touch on their own bodies when observing another being touched), in the context of both sharing the emotional state of others and providing an appropriate empathic response to the person in need. The results from these studies will provide a better understanding of the level of social impairment in both ASD and MTS and could potentially provide empirical support to the view that individuals with autism do not lack empathy per se, but that instead, impaired self-other distinction might prevent them from responding empathically to others. Furthermore, these findings could also shed light on how self-other processes typically operate. The second stream will use non-invasive brain stimulation to enhance self-other processing in both atypical groups (MTS and ASD) and in healthy individuals. Finally, the third stream will combine the same brain stimulation technique with neuroimaging in order to gain a better understanding of how brain stimulation affects the connectivity patterns between different brain regions involved in self-other processing. The findings from Streams 2 and 3 will provide a better insight into the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting a range of social abilities including empathising with others, imitating another's action, controlling the tendency to imitate others and distinguishing between our own face and that of another person. This proposal affords a unique opportunity to understanding key processes underlying our ability to interact with others. Although most of us take this ability for granted, little is known about how precisely this happens. Furthermore, for individuals with known social impairments such as those with ASD, difficulties in controlling self-other representations in different social contexts can have severe impacts in their personal, family and professional lives. Therefore, the questions addressed by these experiments are important for both advancing scientific theories of social interaction and for devising future therapeutic interventions in clinical populations where self-other processes have broken down.