ABSTRACT
The first engrams (protoengrams) are formed as units for the reading, and hence also the recognition, of configurations of sensory afferences.1 This is already the case in the fetus (Della Vedova, Manfredi and Imbasciati 1996; Imbasciati 1997; Manfredi and Imbasciati 1997; Manfredi, Tommasoni and Imbasciati 1999) for hearing, for the chemical senses and partly also for the sense of sight (light intensity). The same is true of the tactile-proprioceptive senses, which entail integration with motor efferences; in other words, the engrams are also based partly on the brain’s commands to muscle groups. The successive motor acquisitions, already in the fetus and, to an even greater extent, in the neonate, show that the motor programs (outputs), in order to be recorded (memorized) in their progressively increasing sophistication and complexity, must be integrated, in the course of processing, with the progressively growing capacity to process inputs. These inputs are continuously ‘calibrated’ against the afferences relating to the progressive operations whereby perception is constructed. Hence, the protomental operations use not only successive engrams of sensory origin, but also ‘internal’ engrams, made up of the psychomotricity that is in the process of construction, as well as all the internal engrams that represent the first mental ‘products’, such as affects, as described in the previous chapter.
