The social roots of self development: from a bodily to an intellectual interpersonal dialogue

Visual perspective and body ownership modulate vicarious pain and touch: A systematic review

We conducted a systematic review investigating the influence of visual perspective and body ownership (BO) on vicarious brain resonance and vicarious sensations during the observation of pain and touch. Indeed, the way in which brain reactivity and the phenomenological experience can be modulated by blurring the bodily boundaries of self-other distinction is still unclear. We screened Scopus and WebOfScience, and identified 31 articles, published from 2000 to 2022. Results show that assuming an egocentric perspective enhances vicarious resonance and vicarious sensations. Studies on synaesthetes suggest that vicarious conscious experiences are associated with an increased tendency to embody fake body parts, even in the absence of congruent multisensory stimulation. Moreover, immersive virtual reality studies show that the type of embodied virtual body can affect high-order sensations such as appropriateness, unpleasantness, and erogeneity, associated with the touched body part and the toucher's social identity. We conclude that perspective plays a key role in the resonance with others' pain and touch, and full-BO over virtual avatars allows investigation of complex aspects of pain and touch perception which would not be possible in reality.

Meeting the multidimensional self: fostering selfhood at the interface of Creative Arts Therapies and neuroscience

Intriguing explorations at the intersection of the fields of neuroscience and psychology are driven by the quest to understand the neural underpinnings of "the self" and their psychotherapeutic implications. These translational efforts pertain to the unique Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) and the attributes and value of the self-related processes they offer. The self is considered as a multi-layered complex construct, comprising bodily and mental constituents, subjective-objective perspectives, spatial and temporal dimensions. Neuroscience research, mostly functional brain imaging, has proposed cogent models of the constitution, development and experience of the self, elucidating how the multiple dimensions of the self are supported by integrated hierarchical brain processes. The psychotherapeutic use of the art-forms, generating aesthetic experiences and creative processes, touch upon and connect the various layers of self-experience, nurturing the sense of self. The present conceptual analysis will describe and interweave the neural mechanisms and neural network configuration suggested to lie at the core of the ongoing self-experience, its deviations in psychopathology, and implications regarding the psychotherapeutic use of the arts. The well-established, parsimonious and neurobiologically plausible predictive processing account of brain-function will be discussed with regard to selfhood and consciousness. The epistemic affordance of the experiential CATs will further be portrayed, enabling and facilitating the creation of updated self-models of the body in the world. The neuropsychological impact of the relational therapeutic encounter will be delineated, acknowledging the intersubjective brain synchronization through communicative verbal and non-verbal means and aesthetic experiences. The recognition and assimilation of neuroscientific, phenomenological and clinical perspectives concerning the nested dimensionality of the self, ground the relational therapeutic process and the neuroplastic modulations that CATs have to offer on the premise of fostering, shaping and integrating selfhood.

Neurophysiological markers of asymmetric emotional contagion: implications for organizational contexts

Emotions play a vital role within organizations, impacting various crucial aspects of work such as job satisfaction, performance, and employee well-being. Understanding how emotional states spread in organizational settings is therefore essential. Recent studies have highlighted that a leader's emotional state can influence their followers, with significant consequences on job performance. Leaders thus possess the ability to influence their employees' psychological state and, consequently, their well-being. However, the biological underpinnings of emotional contagion from leaders to followers remain unexplored. The field of interpersonal (neuro)physiology, which involves recording brain and peripheral activity of multiple individuals during interactions, holds great potential for investigating this phenomenon. Analyzing the time-lagged synchronization of neurophysiological activity during interactions may serve as a measure of the leader's influence on their followers in organizational contexts. In this "mini review," we examine empirical studies that have employed interpersonal (neuro)physiology to quantify the asymmetrical contagion of emotions in different contexts. Asymmetrical contagion was operationalized as the unidirectional influence exerted by one individual (i.e., the "sender") to another one (i.e., the "receiver"), whereby the receiver's state can be predicted by the sender's one. The reviewed literature reveals that delayed synchronization of physiological states is a widespread phenomenon that may underpin the transmission of emotions. These findings have significant implications for various aspects of organizational life, including leader-to-employee communication, and could drive the development of effective leadership training programs. We propose that Organizational Neuroscience may benefit from including interpersonal neurophysiology in its methodological toolkit for laboratory and field studies of leader-follower dynamics.