Psychologists usually considered the "Self" as an object of experience appearing when the individual perceives its existence within the conscious field. In accordance with such a view, the self-representing capacity of the human mind has been related to corticolimbic learning processes taking place within individual development. On the other hand, Carl Gustav Jung considered the Self as the...
The neural correlates of human emotions are easy to harvest. In contrast, the neural constitution of emotional feelings in humans has resisted systematic scientific analysis. This review summarizes how preclinical affective neuroscience initiatives are making progress in decoding the neural nature of such feelings in animal brains. This has been achieved by studying the rewarding and punishing...
The bipolar affective structures of brain emotional processes – namely negative and positive affects – provide ideal ways to make scientific progress on the “hard problem” of primal consciousness: wherever in subcortical brain regions one applies highly localized electrical deep brain stimulation, and obtains coherent emotional behaviors, animals treat these brain arousals as ‘rewards’ and...
Although most aspects of world and self-consciousness are inherently subjective, neuroscience studies in humans and non-human animals provide correlational and causative indices of specific links between brain activity and representation of the self and the world. In this article we review neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and neuropsychological data supporting the hypothesis that different...
Based on an interdisciplinary perspective, we discuss how primary-process, anoetic forms of consciousness emerge into higher forms of awareness such as knowledge-based episodic knowing and self-aware forms of higher-order consciousness like autonoetic awareness. Anoetic consciousness is defined as the rudimentary state of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual mental experiences. It can...
It is commonly believed that consciousness is a higher brain function. Here we consider the likelihood, based on abundant neuroevolutionary data that lower brain affective phenomenal experiences provide the “energy” for the developmental construction of higher forms of cognitive consciousness. This view is concordant with many of the theoretical formulations of Sigmund Freud. In this...
This essay provides an overview of evolutionary levels of consciousness, with a focus on a continuum of consciousness: from primarily affective to more advanced cognitive forms of neural processing-from anoetic (without knowledge) consciousness based on affective feelings, elaborated by brain networks that are subcortical- and can function without neocortical involvement, to noetic (knowledge...
The primal affects are intrinsic brain value systems that unconditionally and automatically inform animals how they are faring in survival. They serve an essential function in emotional learning. The positive affects index "comfort zones" that support survival, while negative affects inform animals of circumstances that may impair survival. Affective feelings come in several varieties,...
Do we need to consider mental processes in our analysis of brain functions in other animals? Obviously we do, if such BrainMind functions exist in the animals we wish to understand. If so, how do we proceed, while still retaining materialistic-mechanistic perspectives? This essay outlines the historical forces that led to emotional feelings in animals being marginalized in behavioristic...
The brain has many deeply unconscious neural processes, but the realm of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) rather than “awareness” is the critical issue whether there is nothing relevant in mind while so-called “dynamically unconscious” processes are operating in the brain. Concepts such as “conscious awareness” are one step above phenomenal experiences and can easily lead to confusions about...
We believe that conscious mental phenomena (such as feelings) are not epiphenomenal to the workings of the brain. Feelings evolved for good biological reasons; they make specific, concrete contributions to brain functioning. Notwithstanding all the philosophical complexities, therefore, the non-conscious/conscious interactions that are the focus of this book are, in our view, causal...
Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evidence from human brain imaging as well as neurological damage in animals and humans suggesting that some form of consciousness can survive brain damage that commonly causes PVS. We also...
This article summarizes recent conceptual and empirical advances in understanding basic affective processes of hte mammalian brain and how we might distinguish affective from cognitive processes. Six reasons are advanced for distinguishing the two types of consciousness, including (i) the presence of experienced valence, (ii) cortical sub-cortical locus of control, (iii) different developmental...