Thomas Suddendorf

The rise of the metamind

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, How Does My Brain Recognize My Image at All?

For decades researchers have used mirrors to study self-recognition. However, attempts to identify neural processes underlying this ability have used photographs instead. Here we used event related potentials (ERPs) to compare self-face recognition in photographs versus mirrors and found distinct neural signatures. Measures of visual self-recognition are therefore not independent of the medium ...

Mental time travel in animals?

Are humans alone in their ability to reminisce about the past and imagine the future? Recent evidence suggests that food-storing birds (scrub jays) have access to information about what they have stored where and when. This has raised the possibility of mental time travel (MTT) in animals and sparked similar research with other species. Here we caution that such data do not provide convincing e...

The nature of visual self-recognition - 1-s2.0-S1364661313000181-main

Visual self-recognition is often controversially cited as an indicator of self-awareness and assessed with the mirrormark test. Great apes and humans, unlike small apes and monkeys, have repeatedly passed mirror tests, suggesting that the underlying brain processes are homologous and evolved 14–18 million years ago. However, neuroscientific, developmental, and clinical dissociations show that t...

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 131. Simpler for Evolution: Secondary Representation in Apes, Children, and Ancestors

Great apes show behavioural evidence for secondary representation similar to that of children of about two years of age. However, there is no convincing evidence for metarepresentation in apes. A good evolutionary interpretation should be parsimonious and must bring developmental and comparative data in accord. I propose a model based on the work of Perner (1991) and close by pointing out a log...