My conscious experience is that I exist within a world with three dimensional objects around me which appears to be solid holographic images, within which I can move, touch and experience my reality. All of this takes place inside my head but is projected outside of my head and body, by my brain. I am able to walk up in one of these objects that I perceive in my head and touch it. The same applies to my somatosensory perceptions. If I cut my finger, this information is transformed to my brain which in turn relates that sensation back to where my finger is cut. I feel the pain in my finger, not my head. Somehow my brain is able to translate that sensation back to its origin. This is not a trivial matter. My brain has this extroadinary capacity to project the pain to where it came from. The same is true of other somatosensory processing like touch, temperature and pressure, and all my other senses. I propose the the bilaterialification of the brain is what allows me to perceive these experiences.

This 3 dimensional projection of what I see and feel are projected to be outside of my brain and body. These sensations are part of my conscious experience.

As most animals also have bilateral brains, they may also experience their reality in the same way using whatever senses are available to them. This may be part of their conscious experience as it is our own.

My feeling is that these sensation are generated by the bifurcation of my brain into left and right hemisperes, so my question is what sensations do I experience like this that involve both halves of my brain.

Hearing is another sensation that is processed in both parts of my brain, as also are smell and taste. Olfaction (smell) and Gustation (taste), while often considered ipsilateral initially, higher-level processing and integration of these senses also involve bilateral brain regions.

Both sides of your brain process hearing, but each side has specialized roles. The auditory cortex, responsible for processing sound, is in both your left and right temporal lobes.
Generally, your left brain is more involved in understanding and producing speech, while your right brain is more dominant in processing pitch and the overall patterns of sound, such as in music. Signals from your right ear primarily go to the left side of your brain, and signals from your left ear go to the right side, but there’s also cross-communication between the hemispheres.

Another neurological system that involves use of both the left and right sides of my brain is balance. In the vestibular system (balance and spatial orientation), information from the inner ear’s balance organs contributes to processing in both hemispheres too.

Proprioception (awareness of body position and movement) is also processed bilaterally in the brain and has a 3D out of body conception to it like the other sensations mentioned above.

The brain is also able to integrate these sensations together in a unified way. For example, I can reach out to touch and object in my imaginary visual world and I will touch a said object at the same time as I feel this object, and experience that sensation.

All of this offers a possible hint as to why my brain is divided into two halves.

These are all conscious experiences that I perceive.

My next question is what other mammals and animals have their brain divided into 2 halves?

Brain lateralization, where different hemispheres specialize in certain functions, is found in a wide range of animals, not just humans. This includes other mammals birds, dogs, cats, horses, fish, reptiles, and even insects, like bees flies and ants.

This suggests that the bilaterification of the brain is a universally useful evolutionarily phenomenon.

Many animals do not have a brain divided into left and right hemispheres. This includes organisms with very simple nervous systems or no centralized brain at all, such as jellyfish, sponges, corals, starfish, and worms.

Even some animals with more complex nervous systems, like the octopus, do not have a bifocated brain, but they have a central brain and additional “brains” or ganglia in their arms, rather than a single, bilaterally hemispheric brain like mammals.

As bilaterification of the brain helps us humans experience consciousness outside of our brains one may speculate that all these other animals with left and right hemispheres may also have some level of consciousness too. I add a cautionary note, as the octapus, which does not have bilaterifation of its brain is considered to be one of the most highly intelligent animals next to humans. An octopus actually has nine brains: one central brain and eight smaller “mini-brains” (ganglia) in each of its arms.

Self-consciousness is the awareness that you are conscious. This is considered to be a higher level of consciousness. I believe that all animals with consciouness also have some level of self-consciousness, or a representation of themselves in relation to their perceived world as it is benificial to their survival although humans seem to have an extraordinary level of self-consciousness, that they can even go into their heads, think, plan, talk to themselves and enact complex reasoning.

Some other animals also have a high level of self-awareness and are able to think, examples include the orangutan, dolphin, and even the crow.

Even if the bilaterification of the brain is responsible for 3 dimensional sensations, the question of who is observing remains unanswered. This could also be an emergent property of the non-linear bootstrapping of the 2 brain hemispheres.

I believe that the self/mind is I an illusion generated for the brain, by the brain to give us the sensation of control for self preservation. I do not believe in “free will” per se but the ability to stop some thoughts from becoming actions. The neuron activity of a thought needs to proceed BEFORE a thought is made. The experiments of Libet et al confirm this. Libet et al asked a girl to raise her arm when she wanted to. Researchers were able to determine when she would before she was even aware to have made the decision, by detecting a readiness potential in her frontal cortex. My view is the self is really just an illusion or model within our brains. That illusion is perpetuate in humans by humans. In childhood we assign the actions of a child with their name/identity. This exaggerates the notion of self/mind.