FIGURE 10.

The embodied, reflective, agentive self grounded in somatic sensory integration. This hierarchical model visualizes how somatic sensory processing provides a foundation for exteroceptive and interoceptive sensory processing, influences arousal, mediates how arousal meets affect, and ultimately impacts higher-order self-referential processing and bodily self-consciousness. The left side of the graphic visualizes how neurodevelopmental vertical integration leads to horizontal integration of the cortex; the right side depicts hierarchical complexity of selfhood. Brainstem-level somatic sensory integration provides a subconscious sense of primordial self as it relates to the physical environment. Somatic sensory processing then mediates how arousal meets affect at the level of the midbrain PAG, giving rise to rudimentary awareness of a raw affective self. The PAG as a node of the SN allows for switching between salience detection and self-referential processing within the cortical midline structures (DMN). The DMN fluidly interacts with other key ICNs (SN, CEN) to influence behavioral states. Horizontal integration from cortical midline to lateral structures elaborate upon self-referential processing giving rise to an embodied, reflective, agentive sense of higher self that is anchored to the body. CEN, central executive network; DMN, default mode network; ICN, intrinsic connectivity network; PAG, periaqueductal gray; SN, salience network.