Skip to main content

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1441931
This article is part of the Research Topic Self-Concept Plasticity: Behavioral and Neural Evidence View all 4 articles

How to grow a self: development of self-representation in the Bayesian brain

Provisionally accepted
  • Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genova, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The last two decades saw multiple attempts to explain how the self is represented in the brain within the framework of the Bayesian brain. However, these attempts largely focused on describing a developed, adult self-representation. The current paper argues that looking at the developmental trajectory is crucial for understanding the structure of self-representation. It argues that emergence of self-representations should be understood as an instance of the process of acquisition of new internal models of hidden causes of sensory input. The paper proposes how such models emerge and develop over the course of life by looking at different stages of development of bodily and extra-bodily self-representations. It argues that the self arises gradually in a series of discrete steps: from first-person multisensory representations of one's body to third-person multisensory body representation, and from basic forms of the extended and social selves to progressively more complex forms of abstract selfrepresentation. It discusses how each of them might emerge based on domain-general learning mechanisms, while also taking into account the potential role of innate representations.Finally, it discusses how predictions of the proposed model might be experimentally tested.

    Keywords: self, Self-representation, Bayesian Brain, predictive coding, cognitive development, Self-recognition, Bodily self, abstract self

    Received: 31 May 2024; Accepted: 31 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wozniak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Mateusz Wozniak, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genova, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.