Self-awareness is the capacity to comprehend that one exists as an individual, separate from others and the environment. It is the highest cognitive function and, interestingly, the least understood. Self-recognition in front of a mirror has been used as an indicator of self-awareness in animals and young humans because they cannot articulate what they perceive and experience.
Aside from humans, who start to recognize themselves in the mirror at about 18 months of age, mirror self-recognition has only been shown in species that cannot be used for physiological studies of the function of the nervous system, i.e., in primates chimpanzees and orangutans. Recently, however, we have shown that rhesus monkeys, the animal model closest to humans available for electrophysiological studies, are indeed able to recognize themselves in the mirror despite failing the most traditional mirror self-recognition test, the mark test (Rajala et al. 2010). This finding has cleared the way for the investigation of the neural mechanisms underlying self-awareness. The similarity of the monkey brain with the human will allow us to draw important parallels between the two species. The studies will use a combination of behavioral (oculomotor) and physiological techniques (single unit recordings from higher order areas of the cerebral cortex) in awake, behaving rhesus monkeys. This approach is expected to reveal the connection between the subjects' psychophysical reports of self-awareness and the underlying neural substrate.
The broader impacts of the project will include educational and training components from elementary to graduate school levels. Presentations about the structure and function of the nervous system will be given at elementary and high-school levels, and undergraduate and graduate students will be trained in science through research opportunities in the laboratory.
