"Under the assumption that passive-sensory information processing remains intact in completely locked-in ALS [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis] patients, the failure to control autonomic functions with operant learning in the curarized rat (see Dworkin & Miller, 1986), and the described experiments on transcranial magnetic stimulation and voluntary movement seem to provide converging evidence for the following: In the complete locked-in state, the fact that intentional thoughts and imagery are rarely followed by a rewarding or punishing stimulus (i.e., attention from others for that thought) creates an extension of the subjective time perception of the interval between a response (thought) and eventual consequences. Therefore, the probability for an external event (e.g., attention of a family member) to function as a perception of a causal contingency between the response (thought) and its consequence becomes progressively smaller, and after a long period of no reinforcement it may vanish altogether. What fills the subjective world may consist only of the few remaining external auditory and tactile and visceral sensations bearing no contextual relationship between them. With the lack of reinforcing contingencies controlling the maintenance of the stream of thoughts, they extinguish slowly. As demonstrated by Haggard et al. (2002), it is this lack of motor control consisting of intention (‘‘will''), preparation, execution, and sensory and external feedback that determines the deteriorating subjective time estimation between response and its consequence. Donchin (personal communication) assumes that ‘‘fooling'' the system by providing artificial stimulation such as TMS or electric brain stimulation (of the lateral hypothalamus, for example) contingent after a particular neural response may delay the extinction of goal-directed thinking. The motor control factor responsible for the cessation of voluntary cognitive activity and goal-directed thinking in the completely locked-in patient and the curarized animal lends support to a ‘motor theory of thinking’ similar to that discussed by William James (1890).”
The foregoing idea conflicts with the more popular notion that “the human brain is capable of generating a well-defined model of the subject’s self even in the absence of somatic sensory signals derived from a physical body.” (Nicolelis 2011, p. 61). We (Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024) favor the Birbaumer interpretation that movement and re-afference (i.e., the effect of movement on the senses) through vestibular and proprioceptive mechanisms (Jékely et al. 2021) maintain a healthy conscious state of mind, which as mentioned by Birbaumer concurs with the original teachings of Wiliam James (1890). It is re-afference that makes consciousness whole and allows individual organisms to have a sense of self, a uniqueness based on genetics and experience, thereby making that ‘Hard Problem’ (so beloved by philosophers: Chalmers 1995, 1997; Koch and Chalmers 2023) irrelevant. Individuals of a species, therefore, have a shared consciousness based on compromise and eventual consensus on how to define the rules of behavior such as ‘stop at red’ and ‘go at green’.
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