Protoself

The Protoself is the most primitive layer of self-awareness in Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness — a non-conscious neural map of the body's current physiological state, continuously generated by the brainstem and insular cortex. It is not experienced as a feeling; it is the raw biological substrate from which all higher forms of consciousness are constructed. Without the protoself, there is no platform upon which core consciousness or extended consciousness can emerge. The protoself is therefore the biological answer to the question of where the sense of "mine" begins: not in language, not in memory, but in the brain's relentless mapping of the body it inhabits.

The protoself reveals that the foundations of consciousness are not cognitive but biological — not thought about the body, but the body thinking about itself. Any theory of mind that begins with reasoning and adds feeling as an afterthought has built its house on the roof.