Scientific Understanding of Consciousness
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Thalamocortical Activity

The Self  (Damasio)

 

The most basic kind of self or consciousness is a second-order idea based on two first-order ideas -- (1) idea of the object that we are perceiving and (2) idea of our body as modified by the perception of the object. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 215)

Sense of self; critical component in any notion of consciousness. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 89)

What gives the brain a natural means to generate the singular and stable reference we call self? The functionality in the brain representing the self is, biologically speaking, based on a collection of nonconscious neural patterns representing the body proper. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 134)

Internal Milieu as a Precursor to the Self. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 135)

Biological antecedents of the sense of self; a single, bounded, living organism bent on maintaining stability to maintain its life. Survival, a boundary, regulation of internal states, maintain life within a narrow range of the internal states. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 136)

Constancy of the internal milieu is essential to maintain life, and is a blueprint and anchor for what eventually becomes a self in the mind. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 136)

Singularity of self -- one body, one person. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 142)

Developmental psychologists have suggested that humans develop a 'self' by the time they are 18 months old. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 198)

Brain maps represent the structure and state of the body at any given time.  Some maps relate to the world within, the organism's interior.  Other maps relate to the world outside, the physical world of objects that interact with the organism. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 197)

Sense of self brings orientation-- sense of self introduces the notion that all the current activity represented in brain and mind pertain to a single organism whose auto-preservation needs are the basic cause of most events currently represented. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 208)

Without a sense of self and without the feelings that integrate it, large-scale mental integrations of information would not be oriented to the problems of life, survival and the achievement of well-being. (Damasio; Looking for Spinoza, 208)

 

Autobiographical self

Autobiographical self occurs only in organisms endowed with a substantial memory capacity and reasoning ability, but do not require language. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 198)

Our autobiographical selves have permitted us to know about progressively more complex aspects of the organism's physical and social environment and the organism's place and potential range of action in a complicated universe. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 198)

Autobiographical self occurs only in organisms endowed with a substantial memory capacity and reasoning ability, but do not require language. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 198)

 

Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory -- an organized record of past experiences of an individual organism. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 199)

 

Core Self

Procession of the self from the simple core self to the elaborate autobiographical self. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 134)

 

Proto-Self

Proto-self -- structures that regulate and represent the body's internal states. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 100)

Proto-self is a coherent collection of neural patterns that map, moment by moment, the state of the physical structure of the organism in its many dimensions. We are not conscious of the proto-self. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 154)

Brain structures required to implement the Proto-self:  (1) several brain-stem nuclei, (2) hypothalamus, (3) insular cortex (diagram) (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 155)

Several brain stem nuclei regulate body states and map body signals. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 155)

Hypothalamus contributes to the current representation of the body by maintaining a current register of the state of the internal milieu. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 156)

Brain structures not required for the Proto-self -- all the early sensory cortices; temporal cortices; most of the frontal cortices; hippocampal formation. (Damasio; Feeling of What Happens, 157)