Today, we continue our emergent evolutionary physicalist analysis of how people came to possess the feeling of being an independent self–both physical and aphysical. We start from biology so to avoid foolish and unfounded speculation as to the nature of the personal self. For seekers have no use for imaginary and unprovable hypotheses–regardless of age or guru.

Previously, I stated that higher mammals and primates appear to behave as it they had a rudimentary “me-mine” operating in their daily activities. Such creatures seem to possess an atemporal awareness that they (as a physical form) are separate from other creatures. The protoself regulates and represents the body’s internal states via bilateral information transfer between the body and the CNS (the internal image-operator).

Clearly, such protoselves function via multiple neural circuits, including, brainstem nuclei, hypothalamus, insular cortex, and perhaps striatal areas.

Typically, episodic, or autobiographical, memory begins to be present, in mentally and physically healthy children, around age 3 (the prior period of time is denoted as solid ‘childhood amnesia’). However, some extremely bright children can recall autobiographical events as young as 18 months. Mental and physical trauma has been shown to severely prolong the period of childhood amnesia, sometimes as late as 11 or 12 years old. Most of these memories are unavailable for recall by the child or adult consciously as most young children will automatically enter into a dissociated ego state(s) during the traumatic event(s) as a protective psychological defense. These ego states are dissociated from the normal set of ego state or personas utilized by a person.

Autobiographical memory emerges gradually across the preschool years through social interaction and cognitive developments. Emergence is a well-established concept in evolutionary and developmental biology and has increasing use in psychology as well. For example, one sees that neonate begins as a single-celled zygote and emerges into a complex organism from an inconceivably large number of interactions of DNA, cells and their products, organ growth, and the maternal environment. Of course, none of such contributing levels of organization constructs or causes the resulting infant, which is a genuinely novel product. The concept of emergence is applicable to psychological development, herein, the emergence of a new form of memory.

The idea that each of us function because of myriad of dynamical systems interacting with each other is consistent with the idea of emergence.  A process is dynamic in that it occurs over time. It is time-dependent in the sense that the effect of a particular input at any point is dependent on the state of the entire system at that point, which is itself variable, depending on the sequence and character of prior inputs. In other words, the ultimate outcome is history-dependent. A dynamic developmental system increases in size and complexity over time, adding components that interact with the previous state of the system so to produce a new level of a complexity. This process depends on the self-organizing characteristic of systems (autopoiesis) which determine limits on its variability.

Examining how autobiographical memory emerges requires a definition of what it is and how it is differentiated from other kinds of memory. A working definition considers autobiographical memory:  as memory for personally significant events, in distinction from memory of other things, such as facts, skills, and how to ride a bicycle. It also involves self-directed emotions, goals, and personal meanings. How autobiographical memory develops is seen by studying children longitudinally.
memories.

It is widely accepted that memory is not a unitary concept, but, “is composed of multiple systems operating under different logic and neuroanatomy  Memory theorists have proposed a number of different memory types based on studies of normal adults, amnesic participants, brain structures, and neural circuits. Most theorists divide memory into five systems distinguishable by neural imaging studies: working memory, semantic memory, episodic memory, the perceptual representation system, and procedural memory. The first three are considered as subsystems of declarative memory, whereas the last two are nondeclarative. Semantic memory provides a general knowledge base, being common to humans and other mammals / birds. Episodic memory is a recently evolved memory system specifically involved in events happening in space-time coupled with the awareness of self being present in the experience—the feeling that “I was there, I did that.” These characteristics constitute “autonoesis” or “experiential awareness.” Noetic memory consciously draws on the personal knowledge base, but does not relive the past or travel backwards in time. There is extensive evidence from neuroimaging and case studies of amnesia supporting the  notion that semantic and episodic memory processes use distinctive neural pathways and brain regions for encoding and retrieval. In particular, it appears that semantic memory retrieval may be more localized in the frontal lobes of the left hemisphere, whereas episodic retrieval involves additional processes in the right hemisphere. Autobiographical memory is a special form of declarative memory, and its most distinctive form is episodic .

Not all personal memory is or becomes autobiographical. The pragmatic use of memory for routinely experienced events invokes still another memory-type distinction, one between scripts and specific episodes. Scripts are a kind of generalized memory for the structure of routine
events. A classic example is the script for going to a restaurant: enter, get seated, read menu, order, receive food, eat, pay, and leave. There is good evidence that even very young children who appear to have few if any autobiographical memories have strong and extensive scripts for the everyday events of their lives.

It is proposed that basic memory served to organize action in the present and the immediate future (e.g., in ancient hominid ancestors, perceptual memory for edible plants or predators to avoid). Specific memory for a specific episode in the past (if not life threatening) would not be relevant to this basic functional system, whereas general memory for scripts, scenes, and procedures would be. This proposal implies an earlier form of generalized memory dealing with real time events, later supplemented, by an explicit system for specific episodes experienced in the specific past.

Inasmuch, as a non-personalized, generalized memory mets the survival needs of most creatures under primitive socialization; the most parsimonious explanation for the evolution of a memory system adapted to remembering the specific details and involvement of the self in the past  is enculturation.

Reviewing, we emphasize that autobiographical memory typically involves a sense of self experiencing the event at a specific point in time and space (autonoesis); autobiographical memory is not just referenced to the self, but is personally significant, concerned with episodes that have personal meaning. Personal meaning emerges from emotions, motivations, and goals that are constructed in interaction with others in the world. Thus, we define autobiographical memory as declarative, explicit memory for specific points in the past, recalled from the unique perspective of the self in relation to others.

Clearly, over ontogeny episodic memories segments begin to cohere, eventually forming into life narratives by late adolescence. There is experimental evidence that children begin to construct temporally richer and more comprehensive life narratives around thematically related episodes sometime during adolescence. That is, progressive developments in language, narrative, temporal understanding, and understanding of self and others are critical components of creating life narratives, just as these are critical components of creating specific autobiographical memories during the preschool years

Summarizing, while the feeling of being present in real time is established by age 3 or so, i.e., the cognitive self; our capacity to place ourselves in time and space, as a unified and integrated (though only superficially) entity, arises from the gradual establishment of an autobiographical information system from age 4 or 5 until the end of adolescence.  In other words, our virtual existences become personal dramas, replete with unique casts of characters, props, scenes, themes, and so on.

Tomorrow, I will return to the formation of the feeling of being present in the here and now from a metaphysical stance.  Again, I caution you, metaphysical and mystical models offered in days past are often incorrect when observed in the present. A true mystic desires only the truth, verifiable truth, as nothing else is fitting for a seeker of the Most High.