Join us in this episode as we engage with Dr. Budson in discussing the evolution and complex roles of consciousness and memory. There is often a mix-up between why consciousness developed and the additional roles it has adopted over continued evolution. Dr. Budson proposes that consciousness originally evolved as part of the episodic memory system, likely to enable the flexible combination and rearrangement of past events to plan for the future. Over time, consciousness has been co-opted to fulfill other non-memory-related functions such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. This theory, Dr. Budson argues, aligns with several phenomena, like the slow speed and the retrospective nature of consciousness, that other theories struggle to explain. Understanding this could have profound implications for our comprehension of intentional a ...