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31 papers
This article reviews theory and research on how people and cultures shape each other. It defines the self as the “me” at the center of experience — a developing sense of awareness and agency that forms as a person (both brain and body) becomes tuned to different environments. The authors…
This review says our sense of being a body comes from the brain combining many body signals. It describes three parts of bodily self-consciousness: self-identification (feeling a body is mine), self-location (where I feel I am), and the first-person perspective (the point from which I see). Experiments that create mismatched…
Researchers interviewed 92 adults with autism to study “camouflaging,” which means hiding or changing autistic behaviors in social situations. They used thematic analysis to make a three-stage model. People said they camouflage to fit in and make connections. Camouflaging included masking (hiding traits) and compensation (using learned social techniques). Reported…
This paper explains how being aware of internal body signals (called interoceptive awareness) is tied to understanding and managing emotions. It describes a therapy named Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT) that teaches three core interoceptive skills—identifying, accessing, and appraising bodily signals—using education and hands-on body work. The authors present…
This paper explains Somatic Experiencing (SE), a form of trauma therapy that focuses on guiding a person's attention to internal body sensations (like heartbeat, breathing, muscle feeling) instead of mainly talking about thoughts or memories. The authors describe how SE claims these bodily sensations can help complete interrupted defensive responses…
Attachment theory, described about 40 years ago, explains stable ways people form close bonds. This review sums up brain imaging and cognitive studies that link adult attachment styles (secure, avoidant, anxious, resolved/unresolved) to how people feel about and think about others. It proposes that attachment style shapes quick judgments of…
Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, or HPPD, is a rare condition tied to using hallucinogenic drugs. People with HPPD keep having changes in how they see things after the drug wears off. It is diagnosed more often in people who already had mental health problems or problems with drug use, but…
This article explains that a brain network called the default mode network (DMN) supports self-related thoughts and autobiographical memory and helps form a stable sense of self. In people with PTSD, the DMN shows substantially reduced connectivity at rest compared with healthy people, and bigger reductions are linked with worse…
Researchers asked people with major depression and people without psychiatric disorders to write open, free descriptions of themselves and of other people. Compared with the control group, the depressed group named fewer positive traits and more negative traits for themselves and for parents and close others. A clustering analysis also…
This paper reviews four computer models that try to reproduce how the glabrous (non-hairy) skin and its mechanoreceptors respond to touch. The authors explain why modelling is useful for researchers in psychology, robotics, and prosthetics, what the models cover (from stimulus to nerve spikes), and what they cannot yet do.…
This study tested whether people who are poor at hearing small pitch differences (congenital amusics) are worse at identifying emotions in speech. The researchers used normal speech, low-pass filtered speech (frequencies above ~500 Hz removed), and high-pass filtered speech (frequencies below ~4800 Hz removed). They found that worse pitch perception…
This paper reports two experiments that tested whether people’s awareness of internal body signals (interoception) changes how physical sensations shape thinking. Interoception means sensitivity to signals coming from inside the body. Experiment 1 used a body‑awareness questionnaire and Experiment 2 used a heartbeat perception task. Both experiments found that interoception…
