We Three: My Brain, My Homunculus, and Me

Abstract

An unconscious sense of the body in all higher mammals is located in somatosensory and motor cortices, colloquially referred to as the Homunculus (H). The time has arrived to consider how H might engage in the dimensions of selfhood that go beyond embodiment. Surely, the neural network modules that process various dimensions of selfhood must at least access and interact with the H or a stored memory of it. In this review, I suggest that our traditional understanding of H is much too simplistic. This review specifies a set of experimental approaches that should enlarge our understanding of the brain mechanisms of selfhood.