https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonoetic_consciousness
Autonoetic consciousness is the human ability to mentally place oneself in the past and future (i.e. mental time travel) or in counterfactual situations (i.e. alternative outcomes), and to thus be able to examine one's own thoughts.
One's sense of self affects their behavior, in the present, past and future. It relates to how one reflects on their own past behavior, how they feel about it, and this in turn determines if they do it again.[1]: 308–309
It is episodic memory that deals with self-awareness, memories of the self and inward thoughts that may be projected onto future actions of an individual.[2][page needed] It was "proposed by Endel Tulving for self-awareness, allowing the rememberer to reflect on the contents of episodic memory".[3] Moreover, autonoetic consciousness involves behaviors such as mental time travel,[4][5] self-projection,[6]and episodic future thinking,[7] all of which have often been proposed as exclusively human capacities.[8]
