The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory.
Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience January 3, 2014 Marie Vandekerckhove, Luis Carlo Bulnes, Jaak Panksepp 65 citations
Consciousness arises from a foundational, primitive form called anoetic consciousness—a basic, first-person flow of affective, homeostatic, and sensory-perceptual experiences. This rudimentary state underlies all learning and memory, giving rise to noetic (knowledge-based) consciousness and, eventually, autonoetic consciousness, which enables mental time travel—reflecting on past experiences and imagining future possibilities. The authors propose a multi-tiered neuroevolutionary framework linking genetically controlled primary processes (affective), secondary processes (learning and memory), and higher tertiary processes (developmentally emergent), explaining how affective experiences become cognitive and object-oriented, leading to episodic memory and self-aware awareness.