RC

"We are our narratives" has become a popular slogan. "We" refers to
our selves, in the full-blooded personconstituting
sense. "Narratives" refers to the stories we tell about our -selves
and our exploits in settings as
trivial as cocktail parties and as serious as intimate discussions
with loved ones. We express some in
speech. Others we tell silently to ourselves, in that constant little
inner voice. The full collection of one's
internal and external narratives generates the self we are intimately
acquainted with. Our narrative selves
continually unfold.
State-of-the-art neuro-imaging and cognitive neuropsychology both
upholds the idea that we create our
"selves" through narrative. Based on a half-century's research on
"split-brain" patients, neuroscientist Michael
Gazzaniga argues that the human brain's left hemisphere is specialised
for intelligent behaviour and
hypothesis formation. It also possesses the unique capacity to
interpret - that is, narrate - behaviours and
emotional states initiated by either hemisphere. Not surprisingly, the
left hemisphere is also the language
hemisphere, with specialised cortical regions for producing,
interpreting and understanding speech. It is
also the hemisphere that produces narratives.
Gazzaniga also thinks that this left-hemisphere "interpreter" creates
the unified feeling of an autobiographical,
personal, unique self. "The interpreter sustains a running narrative
of our actions, emotions, thoughts, and
dreams. The interpreter is the glue that keeps our story unified, and
creates our sense of being a coherent,
rational agent. To our bag of individual instincts it brings theories
about our lives. These narratives of our
past behaviour seep into our awareness and give us an autobiography,"
he writes. The language areas of
the left hemisphere are well placed to carry out these tasks. They
draw on information in memory (amygdalohippocampal
circuits, dorsolateral prefrontal cortices) and planning regions
(orbitofrontal cortices). As
neurologist Jeffrey Saver has shown, damage to these regions disrupts
narration in a variety of ways,
ranging from unbounded narration, in which a person generates
narratives unconstrained by reality, to
denarration, the inability to generate any narratives, external or internal.
How does Gazzaniga's interpreter produce a narrative self? In 2003,
one of us (Bickle) suggested that our
"little inner voice" is the key. The inner voice may be produced by
ongoing activity in language regions of the
left hemisphere, both when the products of that activity are broadcast
via external speech and when they
are silently expressed through inner speech.
One compelling study used PET imaging to watch what is going on in the
brain during inner speech. As
expected, this showed activity in the classic speech production area
known as Broca's area. But also
active was Wernicke's area, the brain region for language
comprehension, suggesting that not only do the
brain's speech areas produce silent inner speech, but that our inner
voice is understood and interpreted by
the comprehension areas. The result of all this activity, I suggested,
is the narrative self.


1.

What does the phrase "we are our narratives" mean?
(a) Our inner voice keeps us well informed about ourselves.
(b) We construct an idea of ourselves through stories which we
communicate in certain ways.
(c) Our narratives are the true reflections of our identities.
(d) We are known by the stories we tell others.

2.

What does the author mean by the term "narrative self"?
(a) The narrative self is our inner voice that is generated and
interpreted by certain areas of the brain.
(b) The 'narrative self' is a collection of the narratives about our
past behaviour, which seep into
our awareness and give us an autobiography.
(c) The narrative self is the inner voice broadcast via external
speech and actions.
(d) It is the interpreter that sustains a running narrative of our
actions, emotions, thoughts, and
dreams.



3.

From the views presented in the passage we can infer that
(a) the 'narrative self' is the glue that keeps our stories unified
and makes us rational beings.
(b) our narrative selves are like alter egos, which are heard and
comprehended by us.
(c) our narratives of the past help create a sense of who we are.
(d) narratives are mostly in first person because of the strong 'inner voice".