Who You Are Is Not Stored in the Past

Metacognition and Self-Awareness: Neural and Cognitive Mechanisms in Brain Ageing and Alzheimer's Disease

Youssef Bellaali. Doctoral Thesis, Université catholique de Louvain. 2026

I want to be upfront about this post. This post is different from the others on this site. I am not summarizing a study about aphantasia. It’s basically what happened in my head when I was reading excerpts from a doctoral thesis about Alzheimer's disease and brain aging. This paper came to my inbox via a google alert that I have set-up. I initially deleted it because it had nothing to do with aphantasia, but then figured why not look at it.

I should also add that I was clueless in reading most of the paper. But this post does not come from his data, but more from his intro and summary on episodic and semantic memory and aging.

The thesis builds on something called the autobiographical self model and the Self Memory System. Both of these are frameworks researchers use to explain how personal memories are not just storage. They are the raw material people use to construct a continuous sense of who they are. You stitch your past experiences together into a story, and that story is how you know yourself. When Alzheimer's begins to damage that system, people lose that vibe. The past starts to disappear and the sense of self becomes unstable.

So here is where my brain went while reading it. If most people build their identity by looking backward, by replaying memories and reliving experiences, then what does that mean for someone who has never had access to that film? Someone with SDAM remembers the facts of their past but cannot relive the emotional experience of it. Someone with aphantasia cannot generate the visual layer of memory at all. They were never building identity the way the thesis describes. They built something else entirely.

My best answer, and this is me thinking out loud, not citing research, is that people with aphantasia and SDAM build their sense of self from what they are doing right now. Not from who they were. From their current values, their current choices, their current way of showing up in the world. Identity constructed from action instead of memory. Their decisions are rooted in the present instead of being dictated by the past. 

It might actually explain some things I have observed in the classroom for years. The student who does not hold grudges. The kid who shows up completely fresh to every situation. The kid who is remarkably present because they are not somewhere else in their head, replaying last Tuesday. The kid who goes to gym class and doesn’t replay that kickball game in 3rd grade.

The Alzheimer's research shows us how important memory is to identity by showing what happens when it degrades. People with aphantasia and SDAM show us something completely different. They show us that a solid, stable sense of self can be built on a foundation that most researchers have not been looking at. The past was never the only place to build a self from. 

Stay messy,

Paul

Source: Bellaali, Y. Metacognition and Self-Awareness: Neural and Cognitive Mechanisms in Brain Ageing and Alzheimer's Disease. Doctoral Thesis, Université catholique de Louvain.

The PDF of his thesis can be downloaded here