Conceptualizing personhood has been a topic relevant to ethics, neuroscience, as well as psychology. Understanding characteristics or traits that one must possess in order to constitute as a "person" has been debated for centuries. In our current time period, scholars have agreed on several attributes that humans exercise to differentiate themselves from "non-persons". Identifying these attributes is critical to understanding human behavior, as well as distinguishing between humans and other species. More importantly, we can utilize the acquired knowledge and apply them to neurological and psychological disorders; having a thorough comprehension of personhood allows experts in our fields to better understand which components of our person have deficits, and therefore approach them accordingly.
Farah and Heberlein (2007) acknowledged previous research that aligned with their definitions of a true “person”; they discussed that most individuals studying personhood agree that humans are to possess rationality, a sense of time (understanding that there is a past and a future), self awareness, control over our existence, feeling, understanding that our self consists of undergoing experiences, and more. Distinguishing between organisms that may or may not have these components makes it difficult to only attach these terms to humans. However, an interesting point to consider is that our neurobiology consists of brain structures that are quite literally dedicated to the aspects of a “person” (Farah & Heberlein, 2007). This is exemplified through structures such as the fusiform gyrus, amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and temporoparietal junction (Farah & Heberlein, 2007); these correlates are associated with human face recognition, emotion processing, mental states/higher level thinking, and body movements. The significance of identifying systems within humans that correspond with attributes of a “person” is that we can infer that our systems within were made for humans specifically; we utilize the structures above and several others to exercise components of our personhood that are necessary for the moment. An aspect of personhood that deserves more recognition and is met with ambiguity regarding where it might be housed in the brain is the self. A crucial aspect of personhood and one that we spend our lifetime developing, is also one that can be applied to neuro and psychological deficits.
Similar to personhood as a whole, the self has more than one component to recognize. Hutmacher (2020) discussed that patients with dementia are characterized with a deterioration of memory and language that impact their ability to engage with their narrative selves; the narrative self refers to one’s ability to tell stories and define themselves based on those stories. Hutmacher (2020) argued, however, that the self as a whole consists of more than just the narrative self; therefore, while the remembering (narrative) self may decline, the experiencing (core or minimal) self can still thrive in these individuals. Various interpretations of the experiencing self have emerged from research, but the perspective that can truly resonate with dementia patients is that the experiencing self is constructed spatially, temporally, and is impacted by their own histories (Hutmacher, 2020). Alongside this understanding, Hutmacher (2020) noted that dementia patients may exhibit decline in areas of their memory, but there are six types of body memory that remain intact; these include procedural, situational, intercorporeal, incorporative, pain, and traumatic memory. The maintenance of body memory demonstrates that the experiencing self within dementia patients does not deteriorate, and therefore should not be ignored.
Recognizing the experiencing self allows us to integrate personhood into the lives of patients and acknowledge that they are still entitled to their person, rather than simply a deterioration. With this in mind, as Hutmacher (2020) noted, we should aim towards minimizing the idea that individuals with dementia lose themselves; they instead enhance other aspects of themselves that still deserve to constitute as a person.
References
Hutmacher, Fabian. “Understanding the Self of People with Dementia.” Zeitschrift Für Gerontologie Und Geriatrie, vol. 54, no. 2, 2020, pp. 161–166., https://doi.org/10.1007/s00391-020-01718-1.
Farah, Martha J., and Andrea S. Heberlein. “Personhood and Neuroscience: Naturalizing or Nihilating?” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 7, no. 1, 2007, pp. 37–48., https://doi.org/10.1080/15265160601064199.
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