Neuroscientific Models of Subjectivity in Check: The Case of Terminal Lucidity

IVANA ANTON MLINAR

Santiago

Workshop; Workshop The Place of the Person in the Cosmos; 2017

Universidad de Oxford

Does a selfexist? What relationship does it have with conscious life and its neuropsychiatricdisorders and mechanisms? The notionof self becomes indeed essential to understand consciousness in itssubjectivity and self-identity. Considering the embodied and embedded conditionof the self, neuropsychiatric pathologies seem to alter subjectivity and reflectits fragility. However, a minimal self seems to endure, what means that thecore of subjectivity remains despite both neurological and psychiatric disorders.Anotherchallenge for an embodied and interdisciplinary perspective of the self lies inthe case of terminal lucidity. The unexpected return of mental clarity andmemory shortly before death in patients suffering from severe psychiatric andneurologic disorders is a frequently reported but rare or almost not studiedphenomenon. Terminal lucidity has been reported in the medical literature overthe past 250 years in patients suffering from brain abscesses, tumors, strokes,meningitis, dementia or Alzheimer?s disease, schizophrenia, and affectivedisorders. Therecovering of lost memory, cognitive functions and self-identity with adeteriorated brain raises some challenges like:-The neuroscienceof terminal states may be more complex than traditionally thought.-Seeminglyirreversible lost cognitive functions can be somehow regained. More neurologicstudies are needed in terminal states.-How memoryand cognitive contents are retained when self-identity and cognitive abilitieswere lost to be later brought back when the abilities are recovered. -Subjectivitymay have different ?mechanisms? to endure and to manifest than the usuallyassigned by neuroscientific models of normal brains.