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When speaking of the experience, do not leave out the experiencer: on self and magnitude

Memory, motor-control, attention, learning, navigation, emotion, and perception are among the foundations of cognitive neurosciences. For many years, these have been studied separately, as distinct functions ( Fodor, 2000 ). Recently, several veins of research have lead to the idea that different cognitive faculties may be handled by similar neurocognitive mechanisms. Likewise, Buzsáki and Moser proposed that a range of interacting cell types (such as “ place cells,” “ grid cells” or “ time cells”), which support navigation, may also play a role in memory ( Buzsáki and Moser, 2013 ). Moreover, these prominent researchers have suggested that navigation and memory rely on two fundamental mechanisms: one that is more allocentric, related to representations of landmarks in the environment, and another that is egocentric, self-referenced ( Buzsáki and Moser, 2013 ). Similarly to navigation, memory encompasses autobiographical memory, related to events that happened to the experiencer (self-referenced), and semantic memory of events that the experiencer “ knows”. Perception may be taken from a self-referenced first-person-perspective or from a third-person-perspective. Correspondingly, in the affective plane, emotion may be self-referenced, reflecting the experiencer own-feelings, or may be dominated by a third-person-perspective, when the experiencer is absorbed in the life of others ( Zinck, 2008 ).

Another vein of research, which pointed to cross-modalities, relates to “ mental-lines.” Experiments on mental number scaling in archaic cultures or children have revealed that humans represent numbers along a logarithmic scale, termed “ mental-number-line” ( Dehaene and Cohen, 1995 ; Dehaene et al., 1999 , 2008 ). Human experience numbers according to the resolution of perception: the perceived resolution decreases as numbers increase, yielding logarithmic scale. Logarithmic distribution was shown to fit the relation between temporal-distance of the experiencer from the experience and memory retention ( Rubin and Schulkind, 1997 ; Spreng and Levine, 2006 ). Moreover, cognitive performance was found to decrease logarithmically as temporal-distance to the event increased ( Arzy et al., 2009a ). Emotional expression was also found to be represented by a mental-magnitude-line ( Holmes and Lourenco, 2011 ). It is proposed that these common patterns of magnitudes are related to the self-referenced (spatial) processing of the different domains.

The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is believed to play a special role in these self-referenced magnitude-related processing. The TPJ was found to be implicated in processing the mental-number-line ( Göbel et al., 2001 ) with respect to quantity, numbers, or spatial attention ( Dehaene et al., 2003 ), and likewise may be involved in other mental-magnitude-lines. However, the TPJ is known to be involved in many self-referenced functions including agency, ownership, perspective-taking and autobiographical memory which are not necessarily related to magnitude ( Blanke and Arzy, 2005 ). Likewise, in a couple of investigation of the mental-time-line ( Arzy et al., 2009b ), activation at the right TPJ showed a symmetrical distribution of brain activity as a function of the temporal-distance of events from the present time: activation was increased for closer events than for more distant events (both in past and future). The TPJ was also found to play a special role in coordinating the relation between one’s self-location in space and different external reference points ( Ruby and Decety, 2001 ; Vogeley and Fink, 2003 ). In the personal/social domain, the TPJ was found to coordinate the relation between mentalizing oneself and others ( Lombardo et al., 2010 ).

Taken together, this suggests that different aspects of the subjective experience should be regarded in relation to the experiencing self. Self-related mentalization may have a specific logarithmic pattern, reflected as a “ mental-line.” The temporo-parietal junction may play a special role in mediating these self-referenced functions in the different domains.

Acknowledgments

Supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship within the framework of the EU-FP7 program.

References

Arzy, S., Adi-Japha, E., and Blanke, O. (2009a). The mental time line: an analogue of the mental number line in the mapping of life events. Conscious. Cogn . 18, 781–785. doi: 10. 1016/j. concog. 2009. 05. 007

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Arzy, S., Collette, S., Ionta, S., Fornari, E., and Blanke, O. (2009b). Subjective mental time: the functional architecture of projecting the self to past and future. Eur. J. Neurosci . 30, 2009–2017. doi: 10. 1111/j. 1460-9568. 2009. 06974. x

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Blanke, O., and Arzy, S. (2005). The out-of-body experience: disturbed self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. Neuroscientist 11, 16–24. doi: 10. 1177/1073858404270885

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Buzsáki, G., and Moser, E. I. (2013). Memory, navigation and theta rhythm in the hippocampal-entorhinal system. Nat. Neurosci . 16, 130–138. doi: 10. 1038/nn. 3304

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Dehaene, S., and Cohen, L. (1995). Towards an anatomical and functional model of number processing. Math. Cogn . 1, 83–120.

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Dehaene, S., Izard, V., Spelke, E., and Pica, P. (2008). Log or linear? Distinct intuitions of the number scale in Western and Amazonian indigene cultures. Science 320, 1217–1220. doi: 10. 1126/science. 1156540

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Dehaene, S., Piazza, M., Pinel, P., and Cohen, L. (2003). Three parietal circuits for number processing. Cogn. Neuropsychol . 20, 487–506. doi: 10. 1080/02643290244000239

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Dehaene, S., Spelke, E., Pinel, P., Stanescu, R., and Tsivkin, S. (1999). Sources of mathematical thinking: behavioral and brain-imaging evidence. Science 284, 970–974. doi: 10. 1126/science. 284. 5416. 970

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Fodor, J. (2000). No TitleThe Mind Doesn’t Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Göbel, S., Walsh, V., and Rushworth, M. F. (2001). The mental number line and the human angular gyrus. Neuroimage 14, 1278–1289. doi: 10. 1006/nimg. 2001. 0927

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Holmes, K. J., and Lourenco, S. F. (2011). Common spatial organization of number and emotional expression: a mental magnitude line. Brain Cogn . 77, 315–323. doi: 10. 1016/j. bandc. 2011. 07. 002

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Lombardo, M. V., Chakrabarti, B., Bullmore, E. T., Wheelwright, S. J., Sadek, S. A., Suckling, J., et al. (2010). Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others. J. Cogn. Neurosci . 22, 1623–1635. doi: 10. 1162/jocn. 2009. 21287

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Rubin, D. C., and Schulkind, M. D. (1997). The distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan. Mem. Cognit . 25, 859–866. doi: 10. 3758/BF03211330

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Ruby, P., and Decety, J. (2001). Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: a PET investigation of agency. Nat. Neurosci . 4, 546–550. doi: 10. 1038/87510

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Spreng, R. N., and Levine, B. (2006). The temporal distribution of past and future autobiographical events across the lifespan. Mem. Cognit . 34, 1644–1651. doi: 10. 3758/BF03195927

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Vogeley, K., and Fink, G. R. (2003). Neural correlates of the first-person-perspective. Trends Cogn. Sci . 7, 38–42. doi: 10. 1016/S1364-6613(02)00003-7

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Zinck, A. (2008). Self-referential emotions. Conscious. Cogn . 17, 496–505. doi: 10. 1016/j. concog. 2008. 03. 014

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