The Unconscious Self How the brain encodes bodily-self visual cues in the absence of awareness

We constantly experience ourselves as inherently tied to our conscious experience and to our own body. The nature of self-consciousness has long captivated thinkers across disciplines, sparking debates on its functions and meaning in philosophy, and its underlying brain mechanisms in neuroscience. On one side, consciousness seems to be mainly characterized by its holistic and integrated nature. On the other side, unconscious processing operates at lower cognitive levels, handling predictable and automatic processes crucial for survival. Whitin this framework, bodily-self processing should be intrinsically important for survival, considering that it represents the physical substrate of one’s existence and a spatial reference for environmental interactions. However, less is known about how our bodily self is processed in relation to consciousness. Is it possible that some aspects of bodily self-processing might precede conscious perception? This dissertation investigates the relationship between bodily self and visual awareness, exploring how identity-related visual stimuli are encoded without awareness and prioritized by the brain into conscious perception. Two primary research lines were pursued: one focusing on hand bodily stimuli, whether the second focused on face identity processing. Specifically, the first research line examined how spatial perspective and visual identity of hand stimuli affect visual awareness, and whereas it is possible to trigger unconscious body ownership when bodily self-consciousness constraints are respected. The second research line explored face identity processing and its relation to visual awareness by investigating the relation between self-face perception and electrophysiological correlates of visual awareness, and by investigating unconscious face identity processing in a patient affected by hemianopia and prosopagnosia following brain damages. Across five studies, this work provides evidence that certain aspects of the bodily self might not necessitate conscious processing and can directly influence visual awareness. Together, these ii findings support a hierarchical self-model, where lower-order self-representations operate unconsciously, forming the foundation for higher-order, integrated self-consciousness. This work emphasizes the unconscious, predictable, and relevant nature of bodily self-processing, while highlighting the role of consciousness in resolving ambiguities that might challenge bodily self-consciousness constructs.