Over a decade ago, I introduced a large-scale theory of the cognitive brain which explained for the first time how the human brain is able to create internal models of its intimate world and invent models of a wider universe. An essential part of the theoretical model is an organization of neuronal mechanisms which I have named the Retinoid Model (Trehub, 1977, 1991). This hypothesized brain system has structural and dynamic properties enabling it to register and appropriately integrate disparate foveal (...) stimuli into a perspectival, egocentric representation of an extended 3D world scene including a neuronally-tokened locus of the self which, in this theory, is the neuronal origin of retinoid space. As an integral part of the larger neuro-cognitive model, the retinoid system is able to perform many other useful perceptual and higher cognitive functions. In this paper, I draw on the hypothesized properties of this system to argue that neuronal activity within the retinoid structure constitutes the phenomenal content of consciousness and the unique sense of self that each of us experiences. -/- Trehub, A. (1977). Neuronal models for cognitive processes: Networks for learning, perception, and imagination. _Journal of Theoretical Biology_ 65: 141-169. -/- Trehub, A. (1991). _The Cognitive Brain_. MIT Press. -/- . (shrink)

Activation of the brainʼs putative retinoid system has been proposed as the neuronal substrate for our basic sense of being centered within a volumetric surround –- our minimal phenomenal consciousness (Trehub 2007). Here, the assumed properties of the self-locus within the retinoid model are shown to explain recent experimental findings relating to the out-of-body-experience. In addition, selective excursion of the heuristic self-locus is able to explain many important functions of consciousness, including the effective internal representation of a 3D space on (...) the basis of 2D perspective depictions. Our sense of self-agency is shown to be a natural product of the role of the heuristic self-locus in the retinoid mechanism. (shrink)