In António Damásio

Antonio Damasio

Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W...

's theory of consciousness, the protoself or proto-self describes a basic level of awareness biologically available to the nervous system

Nervous system

The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...

 of animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...

s. In Damásio's theory, the protoself is the first of the three processes leading to human consciousness. The protoself is a coherent collection of neural patterns which map, moment-by-moment, the state of the physical organism. It is non-conscious and solely concerned with homeostasis

Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...

. The next two stages are core consciousness

Core consciousness

In António Damásio's theory of consciousness, core consciousness describes a hypothesized level of awareness facilitated by neural structures of most animals that allows them to be aware of and react to their environment...

 and extended consciousness

Extended consciousness

In biological psychology, extended consciousness is an animal's autobiographical self-perception.Extended consciousness is said to arise in the brain of animals with substantial capacity for memory and reason. It does not necessarily require language...

.

Damásio theorized that the protoself of humans is facilitated in the human brain

Human brain

The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...

 by brainstem nuclei, the hypothalamus

Hypothalamus

The Hypothalamus is a portion of the brain that contains a number of small nuclei with a variety of functions...

, insular cortices

Insular cortex

In each hemisphere of the mammalian brain the insular cortex is a portion of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus between the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe. The cortical area overlying it towards the lateral surface of the brain is the operculum...

, cortical area S2

Cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...

, and the medial parietal cortices

Parietal lobe

The parietal lobe is a part of the Brain positioned above the occipital lobe and behind the frontal lobe.The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different modalities, particularly determining spatial sense and navigation. For example, it comprises somatosensory cortex and the...

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