Evidence suggests that facial perception and facial memory are dissociable processes; one can function without the other and the existence of one without the other can be probed.
Each of these disorders have been found in otherwise cognitively normal individuals, suggesting that the lost capacities are subserved by functionally dissociable mechanisms.
For example, there is recent evidence that the capacity to think about social exchanges is subserved by a domain-specific, functionally dissociable, and even innate mechanism (Stone et al., 2002; Sugiyama et al., 2002).
For example, see Cushman and Green (2012), who offer an explanation of apparently conflicting intuitions about moral results luck in terms of two dissociable processes, and Björnsson and Persson (2012), who offer an explanation in terms of shifting explanatory perspectives.
One may wonder, however, whether the sensory and affective/motivational aspects of nausea, for example, are always dissociable, as seems the case for sensory and affective pain (suffering).
The analysis of phenomenal selfhood in dreams may also shed light on different and potentially dissociable dimensions of self-consciousness.
To say that a system is functionally dissociable is to say that it can be selectively impaired, that is, damaged or disabled with little or no effect on the operation of other systems.
All of these theses are dissociable from core associationist thought (see section 7).
The dissociable sensory and affective components normally associated in bodily pain seem each to have their own psychological and physiological reality.
Hardcastle instead proposes a dissociable dual system of pain transmission, consisting of a pain sensory system closely analogous in its neurobiological implementation to other sensory systems, and a descending pain inhibitory system.
