Findings of neuroscience has shed new lights on the cognition of consciousness in recent years, which encourages more interdisciplinary studies with its links to anthropology and cultural studies .Considering a phenomenon that seems to transcend culture , the demonic masks , this essay attempts to tease out the “archetype” of the masks based on scientific findings .Through a detailed discussion on contested views , the masks are objected to the graphic reconstructions of the propor-tionate neuronal representation accorded parts of the body within the somatosensory area of the brain ’ s neocortex , a“homunculus” as it is called .Results show that the cultural and universal ar-chetype lies in an intuitive projection of the somatosensory structure themselves as revealed through the constant monitoring of the body .What’s more, the research also recognizes that the values and attributes of the cultural construction , or archetype , would vary from different context .In a perfor-mative play , cultural construction will encode and decode the interior images of the body , and play its role among different souls beyond the confines of the individual beings and paradigms .%近年来，神经科学的发展改变了人们对意识的认知，同时神经科学与人类学、文化学结合产生的跨学科交叉研究也日益进步。本文从遍布各地的恶魔面具这一文化现象切入，联系神经科学领域的成果和发现去挖掘面具背后的“原型”。通过比较分析我们发现，面具中的夸张表情不是艺术中的“峰值移动”（ peak shift ），亦非原始人类情绪的写真，也不尽然是动物学家概括的“威胁显示”（threat display），而是对应于大脑皮层躯体感觉区的神经元分布图示---“侏儒人”。研究结果显示，大脑不断监控身体，面具原型就是人类躯体运动感知时对自身脑中结构的投射，即身体的意识或文化结构。但是，尽管面具具有原型式的共同特性，它们的形象所代表的意义会因文化背景的不同而不同。在表演中，文化结构编码和解码身体意象，超越个体限制与范式限制，在不同心灵中产生不同的影响。
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