froginmythroat (FIMT)

In Lecture 5 of the 2003 Reith Lectures series on the Emerging Mind Vilayanur S. Ramachandran discusses new discoveries in the field of neuroscience and what they might mean for ideas about the Self. He describes interesting work by Sarah Blakemore and others who propose a theory of schizophrenia based on the ability of an individual’s brain to distinguish between internally generated actions and externally generated sensory stimuli. He suggests a radically simple test for schizophrenia involving tapping one hand with the other and asking the patient to describe the sensation. Such a theory is able to explain why schizophrenics may think they are being controlled by aliens or the CIA and in fact makes such delusions seem logical given the explanation. As a corollary to this, a schizophrenic should be able to tickle themselves. Using this and ideas emerging from other neuroscience experiments and data, he speculates that what we experience as ourselves may actually be a by-product of the evolutionary necessity to be able to predict the behaviour of others.