Becoming me: how does the developing brain construct a self?
Name of applicant
Victoria Southgate
Title
Professor
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 22,376,291
Year
2024
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Advance
What?
We will investigate the developmental origins of our uniquely human ability to think about ourselves; a defining feature of human consciousness responsible for human flourishing as well as suffering. This project tests a new idea about how the rapidly developing infant brain could create a self-awareness from the richly communicative interactions that infants have with their caregivers.
Why?
Understanding human consciousness is one of the most challenging questions about the nature of the human mind. Studying self-consciousness developmentally, as it emerges, is the most promising way of demystifying human consciousness by shedding light on the mechanisms that are involved in its construction, and showing how it can emerge from minimal beginnings.
How?
The project tests a novel theory in which being the target of others' attention alters infants' awareness of their internal states and provides the foundation for an abstract sense of self. We will tackle this ancient question with 21st century methods, both longitudinally in Danish infants as well as in other cultures where infants' experiences of social interaction differ.