I've used the following idea as a black box for some time now, but it occurred to me I don't fully understand why it's true.
Suppose $A=M_n(R)$ is the algebra of square matrices over some division ring $R$. Then for any $\phi\in\operatorname{Aut}(A)$, we can actually write $\phi$ as the composition of an automorphism induced by an automorphism $\psi$ of $R$ and the conjugation by some unit of $A$. More explicitly, for $\psi\in\operatorname{Aut}(R)$, this induces an automorphism $\tilde{\psi}$ of $A$ by applying $\psi$ to each of the entries in the matrix, for example, $ M=\begin{pmatrix} a_{11} & a_{12}\\ a_{21} & a_{22} \end{pmatrix} \mapsto \tilde{\psi}(M)\begin{pmatrix} \psi(a_{11}) & \psi(a_{12})\\ \psi(a_{21}) & \psi(a_{22}) \end{pmatrix} $ and then we can conjugate by an invertible matrix in $A$, say $N$, to get $N\tilde{\psi}(M)N^{-1}$. I don't think the order of applying $\tilde{\psi}$ or conjugating matters, since if I conjugate first, then I could apply a different $\tilde{\psi}$. So the composition would be something like $\phi=\varphi_N\circ\tilde{\psi}$ where $\varphi_N$ is the conjugation by $N$ map.
My question is, why can any automorphism $\phi$ of $A$ actually be decomposed in this way?