[The psychophysiological mechanisms of awareness: the hypothesis of self-identification].

A hypothesis is advanced concerning the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the mental process of self-identification. It is assumed that a specific excitation pattern produced by a stimulus in one of several cortical areas is transmitted back to the neurons of the same cortical areas via massive parallel feedback pathways. The coincident (identical) excitation patterns--those produced by the stimulus and relayed by backward projections add together in the same neuronal structures thus inducing their intensive firing. This cyclic process amplifies the specificity and intensifies a representation of the stimulus thus creating the most favorable conditions for its categorization by distributed long-term memory. The result of categorization, a symbol or an image, is physiologically expressed by a pattern of neuronal activity, which is also included in the cycle of self-identification. This process underlies representation of subjective meaning of sensory characteristics of the stimulus. Symbolic representation of the stimulus signifies the transition of the perception process from the physiological (objective) to the mental (subjective) level. Theoretical analysis and experimental data show that the cyclic processes of self-identification and symbolic interpretation of sensory signals are likely to produce the phenomenon of awareness.