Mirror-touch synaesthesia: Difficulties inhibiting the other

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• 作者：Idalmis Santiesteban^a ; ^{i.santiesteban@bbk.ac.uk" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Geoffrey Bird^b ; ^c ; Oliver Tew^d ; Maria Cristina Cioffi^e ; Michael J. Banissy^e ; ^c
• 关键词：Mirror-touch synaesthesia ; Synaesthesia ; Self-other ; Social cognition ; Imitation inhibition ; Perspective taking ; Mentalizing
• 刊名：Cortex
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：October 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：71
• 期：Complete
• 页码：116-121
• 全文大小：527 K

文摘

Individuals with mirror touch synaesthesia (MTS) experience touch on their own body when observing others being touched. A recent account proposes that such rare experiences could be linked to impairment in self-other representations. Here we tested participants with MTS on a battery of social cognition tests and found that compared to non-synaesthete controls, the MTS group showed impairment in imitation-inhibition but not in visual perspective taking or theory of mind. Although all of these socio-cognitive abilities rely on the control of self-other representations, they differ as to whether the self, or the other, should be preferentially represented. For imitation-inhibition, representations of the other should be inhibited and self-representations should be enhanced, whereas the opposite is true for visual perspective taking and theory of mind. These findings suggest that MTS is associated with a specific deficit in inhibiting representation of other individuals and shed light on the fractionability of processes underlying typical social cognition.