Why did consciousness develop? What is consciousness good for? If consciousness developed to help us plan and act for the future, why is consciousness so difficult to control? Why is mindfulness so hard? And for that matter, if our actions are under our conscious control, why is dieting (and resisting other urges) so difficult for most of us? When we consider consciousness, a number of questions naturally arise. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general.
We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system-quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system.
If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system-prone to forgetting and false memories. We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. As such, copyright does not extend to the contributions of employees of the Federal Government.
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Direct URL citations are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's website, Written work prepared by employees of the Federal Government as part of their official duties is, under the U.S. Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Budson, MD, VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 South Huntington Ave, 10B-67, Boston, Massachusetts 02130 (email: ). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.Ĭorrespondence: Andrew E. and a grant (BCS-1823795) from the National Science Foundation to E.A.K.
Supported in part by a P30 grant (AG072978) from the National Institutes of Health to A.E.B. §Psychology and Neuroscience Department, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts ‡Center for Health Humanities, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts †Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts *Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts
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