Recovered consciousness: A proposal for making consciousness integral to neuropsychological theories of memory in humans and nonhumans
Morris Moscovitch
Behavioral and Brain Sciences December 1, 1996 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x00043946 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that the medial temporal lobe/hippocampal complex receives only consciously apprehended information and, through a process termed "cohesion," binds the neural elements of a conscious experience into a memory trace, so that consciousness is an integral part of the trace and what is retrieved is an integrated consciousness-content packet. |
Abstract
Abstract: Why is consciousness associated with recovery of memories that are initially dependent on the hippocampal system? A hypothesis is proposed that the medial temporal lobe/hippocampal complex (MTL/H) receives as its input only information that is consciously apprehended. By a process termed “cohesion,” the MTL/H binds into a memory trace those neural elements that mediated the conscious experience so that effectively, “consciousness” is an integral part of the memory trace. It is the phenomenological records of events (Conway 1992), integrated consciousness-content packets, that are recovered when memory traces are retrieved.