Body in memory: the role of bodily self-consciousness in episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness

Episodic memory (EM) enables the conscious recollection of personally experienced events, including contextual features such as visual, auditory and emotional details. However, the role of bodily signals has been largely neglected in EM, although the observer's body provides a rich bodily context during the encoding, storage and recall of events, and has recently been associated with a bodily form of self-consciousness (bodily self-consciousness; BSC). Here, we introduce key concepts and findings on BSC and then summarize recent experimental paradigms, as well as behavioural and neural evidence, on how BSC impacts EM. This includes autonoetic consciousness, a core EM feature that emphasizes the conscious re-experiencing of past events. Current evidence suggests that modulations of BSC impact later memory, including objective EM performance and subjective autonoetic recollection (and other forms of memory such as working memory). These BSC–EM effects are supported by brain mechanisms in the posterior parietal cortex (particularly the temporoparietal junction and precuneus), motor cortex (premotor cortex and supplementary motor area) and prefrontal cortex that are coupled with the hippocampal complex, mediating BSC effects in EM. Linking subjective bodily experience during encoding and retrieval to the subjective re-experiencing of past events, we highlight open questions for future research on self and memory. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘From being to identity: analysis and synthesis of the self’.