Self Comes to Mind

immediate manifestations of sentience. They are the protoself foundation for more complex levels of self. These ideas run counter to widely accepted views, although Jaak Panksepp (cited earlier) has defended a comparable position and so has Rodolfo Llinás. But the conscious mind as we know it is a far different affair from the conscious mind that emerges in the brain stem, and on this point there probably is universal agreement. The cerebral cortices endow the mind-making process with a profusion of images that, as Hamlet might put it, go far beyond anything that poor Horatio could ever dream of, in heaven or earth.
    Conscious minds begin when self comes to mind, when brains add a self process to the mind mix, modestly at first but quite robustly later. The self is built in distinct steps grounded on the protoself . The first step is the generation of primordial feelings, the elementary feelings of existence that spring spontaneously from the protoself. Next is the core self . The core self is about action—specifically, about a relationship between the organism and the object. The core self unfolds in a sequence of images that describe an object engaging the protoself and modifying that protoself, including its primordial feelings. Finally, there is the autobiographical self . This self is defined in terms of biographical knowledge pertaining to the past as well as the anticipated future. The multiple images whose ensemble defines a biography generate pulses of core self whose aggregate constitutes an autobiographical self.
    The protoself with its primordial feelings, and the core self, constitute a “material me.” The autobiographical self, whose higher reaches embrace all aspects of one’s social persona, constitute a “social me” and a “spiritual me.” We can observe these aspects of self within our own minds or study their effects in the behavior of others. In addition, however, the core and autobiographical selves within our minds construct a knower; in other words, they endow our minds with another variety of subjectivity. For practical purposes, normal human consciousness corresponds to a mind process in which all of these self levels operate, offering to a limited number of mind contents a momentary link to a pulse of core self.
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    At neither modest nor robust levels do self and consciousness happen in one area or region or center of the brain. Conscious minds result from the smoothly articulated operation of several, often many, brain sites. The key brain structures in charge of implementing the requisite functional steps include specific sectors of the upper brain stem, a set of nuclei in a region known as the thalamus, and specific but widespread regions of the cerebral cortex.
    The ultimate consciousness product occurs from those numerous brain sites at the same time and not in one site in particular, much as the performance of a symphonic piece does not come from the work of a single musician or even from a whole section of an orchestra. The oddest thing about the upper reaches of a consciousness performance is the conspicuous absence of a conductor before the performance begins, although, as the performance unfolds, a conductor comes into being. For all intents and purposes, a conductor is now leading the orchestra, although the performance has created the conductor—the self—not the other way around. The conductor is cobbled together by feelings and by a narrative brain device, although this fact does not make the conductor any less real. The conductor undeniably exists in our minds, and nothing is gained by dismissing it as an illusion.
    The coordination on which conscious minds depend is achieved by a variety of means. At the modest core level, it begins quietly, as a spontaneous assembly of images that emerge one after the other in close time proximity, the image of an object, on the one hand, and the image of the protoself changed by the object, on the other. No additional brain structures are needed for a core self to emerge, at this simple level. The coordination is natural, sometimes resembling a mere musical duo, played by organism and object, sometimes resembling a chamber music ensemble, and in both cases managing quite well without a conductor. But when the contents being processed in the mind are more numerous, other devices are required to accomplish coordination. In that case a variety of brain regions below the level of the cerebral cortices and within them play a key