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Recovered consciousness: A proposal for making consciousness integral to neuropsychological theories of memory in humans and nonhumans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Morris Moscovitch
Morris Moscovitch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Erindale College, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, L5L 1C6; The Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, North York, Ontario, Canada, M6A 2E1. [email protected]
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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.

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 768 - 770
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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