Payne, Sophie

This thesis investigates self-face recognition and the plasticity ofself-representations through several different behavioural and brainstimulation manipulations. The experiments in Chapters 3 and 4 explore theinvolvement of the temporoparietal area in self-other discrimination processes.Using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate neuralexcitability in this region, the experiments in these chapters explore self-otherface discrimination and mental body rotation. Enhancing neural excitabilityin this area appears to enhance familiar other-recognition and the ability totake another's spatial perspective. Chapters 5 and 6 target brain areasassociated with multisensory bodily illusions with tDCS, and investigate theirinvolvement in self-updating. Chapter 5 explores the contribution of theintraparietal sulcus to multisensory integration during the Enfacementillusion. Chapter 6 investigates the effect of tDCS on somatosensory cortexduring a modified enfacement illusion paradigm to investigate self-updating.Chapters 7 and 8 explore the novel use of a self-association paradigm toupdate bodily and conceptual aspects of self. The experiments in thesechapters demonstrate that a previously unfamiliar face can be incorporatedinto the conceptual self-representation. Chapter 7 investigates the existence ofa bidirectional modulatory link between conceptual and bodily aspects of self,and found that changes to the conceptual self did not have an effect on thebodily self-representation. The experiment in Chapter 8 investigates thenature of the association created between the self-representation and the novelface in Chapter 7 by testing whether the newly associated face affectsrecognition of well-established perceptual and conceptual aspects of self

The Plastic Self: Investigating the Processes of Self-Face Recognition

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