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Root Signature: The Dynamical Proxy of Perspective Ownership and Its Demonstrable Measurability—— Integrative Evidence from Persistent Homology, Anesthetic Suppression, and Psychopathological Drift

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Who am I? Why is the first-person perspective ownership so firmly bound to a specific living organism, seemingly nontransferable and noninheritable? This remains a fundamentally suspended question in consciousness science. Building on the author's proposed "Root-Worldline" theoretical framework, this paper provides an operational definition and a demonstrable proof of the measurability of the Root Signature (RS). The Root Signature is not the perspective ownership itself, nor is it an archival record of life history. Rather, it is the dynamical proxy of perspective ownership at the present moment. We demonstrate that: (1) Root Signatures exhibit individual specificity (nearly 100\% identification rate) and cross-temporal stability (high test-retest reliability); (2) When the Root Signature is suppressed by anesthesia, perspective ownership vanishes; upon recovery of consciousness, the Root Signature re-emerges and perspective ownership returns; (3) During psychotic episodes in schizophrenia, the Root Signature undergoes systematic centrifugal drift, with the magnitude of drift positively correlating with self-disorder scale scores. In conclusion, the Root Signature is the most tightly bound, replicable, quantifiable, perturbable, and predictable dynamical proxy for perspective ownership identified to date. Its demonstrable measurability relies on no historical narrative, awaits no longitudinal accumulation—it exists, here and now, in the scanner, waiting to be measured. This marks the transition of the "individuation of consciousness" problem from philosophical speculation into empirical science.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18631638
Author: Pang, Bo
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7128801718
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