This article addresses the nature and neurophysiological mechanisms of sensory awareness, conscious perception, generation of thought, imagination, intuition, and discursive thought. Sensory awareness and thought generation have been shown to be based on high-frequency cyclic autoidentification processes. Imagination and discursive thought are based on cyclic processes of sensorimotor rehearsal. Rehearsal is a low-frequency process (3–6 Hz) and its content is accessible for review by high-frequency autoidentification processes (30–70 Hz). The succession mental images, words, or symbols is controlled by the motor system and is accessible for review by autoidentification processes. The interaction of sensorimotor rehearsal and autoidentification mechanisms allows us to form images, scenes, and dialogs, to observe and change them, creating a mobile and controlled world of conscious experience. The mechanisms of autoidentification and sensorimotor rehearsal explain the nature of a wide spectrum of the properties of conscious brain activity, including such still-cryptic phenomena as hypnosis and meditation.
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Translated from Zhurnal Vysshei Nervnoi Deyatel’nosti imeni I. P. Pavlova, Vol. 70, No. 5, pp. 696–720, September–October, 2020.
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Sergin, V.Y. Autoidentification and Sensorimotor Rehearsal as Physiological Mechanisms of Consciousness. Neurosci Behav Physi 51, 648–665 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-021-01118-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-021-01118-x