Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
What seems to me the natural explanation for this is that we create, in the current moment, this sense of continuity as part of the mechanism whereby we manufacture a sense of self. Is there any evidence that a continuity is actually required in some sense, or is it just memory that is needed?
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If continuity is required, then it is some very deep process, down in the brainstem: my little list of catastrophic brain events was intended to show that you can mess with the cerebral function very dramatically without losing the sense of a continuous self.
So it is indeed as if you have a brain mechanism which goes looking for "autobiographical memory", and then aligns your current self in continuity with what it finds. It seems to be pretty robust, since people with global amnesia still have a sense of being a single self, as do people who have lost the ability to lay down new memories, as do people who have suffered an episode of unconsciousness lasting for months or years.
But it can also be disrupted in various ways: psychiatric illness and drugs prominent among those. I've experienced depersonalization for a couple of hours myself (sleep deprivation and stress, in my case), and it's not an experience I'd recommend.
Grant Hutchison