Brain, Viscera and First-Person Perspective

The heart and gastro-intestinal tract intrinsically generate their own electrical activity and continuously send ascending signals to the brain. We have recently shown with MEG and fMRI that visceral inputs actively contribute to shaping brain dynamics at rest. I will also present the hypothesis that the neural monitoring of visceral inputs creates a subject-centrered frame of reference, and hence play a key role in the generation of first-person perspective, i.e. the unique bodily-centered viewpoint from which we consciously experience both the environment and our inner mental life. This hypothesis is backep up by a number of experimental studies using MEG and intracranial EEG showing that neural responses to cardiac inputs play a role in perceptual consciousness and self consciousness.