When you undergo anesthesia, you can really feel what I would assume is my sense of self slipping away. And if you're someone who is sort of babysitting a person who's getting an operation, you can actually watch as they wake up. Their sense of self return to them. Well, you can see it with just mourning. It's kind of weird that you kind of lose your consciousness every night and somehow the brain reconstructs that character in the morning. But yeah, generally your brain can reconstruct that character, but that's a constant process of reconstruction. As we get older, of course, you see the progressive loss of that characterization in dementia.
Is the person you believe to be the protagonist of your life story real or a fictional character? In other words, is your very self real or is it an illusion? According to psychologist Bruce Hood, the person at the center of your life isn't really there; it's all neurological smoke and mirrors. Sure, you have the sensation that you have a self, and that sensation is real, but the beliefs and ideas that spring from it are not. Learn all about it in this episode in which you'll hear some new material mixed with a rebroadcast of episode four's interview with the author of The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood.
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