Toward a vestibular contribution to social cognition

Overview & Synopsis

Social cognition encompasses perception of self and others as well as self-other interactions. Self-other interactions rely on a wide range of cognitive processes such as memory, language, reasoning and emotion processing (Beer and Ochsner, 2006). Within the last few years, one productive line of research in social neuroscience has investigated the multisensory and motor foundations of self-other interactions, including emotion perception, emotional contagion, empathy, self-other distinction, or self-other knowledge (e.g. Ambrosini et al., 2013; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Manera et al., 2013; Singer et al., 2004). While a strong emphasis has been traditionally put on visual processes, recent research has noted that self-other distinction and mirroring also require processing of auditory (e.g. self-other voice recognition), proprioceptive and interoceptive signals (Damasio, 2000; Schutz-Bosbach et al., 2006; Seth, 2013; Tsakiris et al., 2011; Xu et al., 2013). In spite of this multisensory development, a vestibular contribution to the embodied mechanisms of social interactions has until now been largely overlooked. This is surprising as the vestibular system has been involved in a growing number of cognitive functions (Smith et al., 2005; Miller and Ngo, 2007; Gurvich et al., 2013), in addition to its crucial role in distinguishing self- and non-self motion. The claim of the present opinion article is that vestibular information should not be ignored when investigating the sensorimotor foundations of social cognition. We present several lines of evidence indicating that vestibular signals may be involved in the sensory bases of self-other distinction and mirroring, emotion perception and perspective taking.