Self Comes to Mind

defining biographical memories must be grouped together so that each can be readily treated as an individual object. Each such object is allowed to modify the protoself and produce its pulse of core self, with the respective feelings of knowing and consequent object saliency in tow. Second, because the objects in our biographies are so numerous, the brain needs devices capable of coordinating the evocation of memories, delivering them to the protoself for the requisite interaction, and holding the results of the interaction in a coherent pattern connected to the causative objects. This is not a trivial problem. In effect, complex levels of autobiographical self—those that, for example, include substantial social aspects—encompass so many biographical objects that they require numerous core self pulses. As a consequence, constructing the autobiographical self demands a neural apparatus capable of obtaining multiple core self pulses, within a brief time window, for a substantial number of components and holding the results together transiently, to boot.
    From a neural standpoint the coordinating process is especially complicated by the fact that the images that constitute an autobiography are largely implemented in the image workspaces of the cerebral cortex, based on recall from dispositional cortices, and yet, in order to be made conscious, those same images need to interact with the protoself machinery, which, as we have seen, is largely located at brain-stem level. Constructing an autobiographical self calls for very elaborate coordinating mechanisms, something that the construction of the core self can, by and large, dispense with.
    By way of a working hypothesis, then, we can say that constructing the autobiographical self depends on two conjoined mechanisms. The first is subsidiary to the core self mechanism and guarantees that each biographical set of memories is treated as an object and made conscious in a core self pulse. The second accomplishes a brain-wide operation of coordination that includes the following steps: (1) certain contents are evoked from memory and displayed as images; (2) the images are allowed to interact in an orderly manner with another system elsewhere in the brain, namely, the protoself; and (3) the results of the interaction are held coherently during a certain window of time.

     
Figure 9.1: The autobiographical self: neural mechanisms.
    The structures involved in constructing the autobiographical self include all those required for the core self, in the brain stem, thalamus, and cerebral cortex, and, in addition, the structures involved in the coordination mechanisms discussed below.
The Issue of Coordination
     
    Before I say one more word about coordination, I would like to make certain that my idea is not misinterpreted. The coordinating devices that I am postulating are not Cartesian theaters. (There is no play being performed inside them.) They are not consciousness centers. (There is no such thing.) They are not interpreter homunculi. (They know nothing, they do not interpret anything.) They are precisely what I am hypothesizing them to be and no more. They are spontaneous organizers of a process. The results of the entire operation materialize not within the coordinating devices but rather elsewhere , specifically, within the image-making, mind-generating structures of the brain located in both the cerebral cortex and the brain stem.
    The coordination is driven not by some mysterious agent external to the brain but rather by natural factors such as the order of introduction of imaged contents in the mind process and the value accorded to those contents. How is the valuation achieved? Consider that any image being processed by the brain is automatically appraised and marked with a value in a process based on the brain’s original dispositions (its biological value system), as well as on the dispositions acquired over lifelong learning. The marking stamp is added during the original perception and is recorded along with the image, but it is also revived during every instance of recall. In brief, confronted with certain sequences of events and a wealth of past knowledge filtered and marked by value, the brain’s coordinating devices assist with the organization of the current contents. Moreover, the coordinating devices deliver the images to the protoself system and finally hold the results of the interaction (pulses of core self) in a transient coherent pattern.
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