Core consciousness

If the spark is the soul of a Transformer, the core consciousness is the mind—the sum total of their personality, intelligence and memory. Unlike the spark itself, it can be backed up, but to little effect if the spark itself is lost.

It can be modified or supplanted by a shell program.

Fiction

Beast Wars cartoon

Dinobot accessed Optimus Primal's core consciousness while the gorilla based form Maximal was in a CR chamber tell him something.Fallen Comrades

Blackarachnia's core consciousness began to crash after experiments with the Transmetal driver.Rhinox had to destroy the power surges or her core consciousness and her spark would be gone. He failed to hit all of them in time but it didn't matter as the driver resurrected her.Crossing the Rubicon

Notes

• The "lost" episode of Beast Wars, "Dark Glass", would have involved Rattrap attempting to install a copy of Dinobot's core consciousness onto Dinobot II.