Brain to mind

Searle suggests that objections to brain-to-mind causation result from a "flawed conception of causation", and he attempts to split the concept in two event-causation (a causal relation "between discrete events ordered sequentially in time"), and non-event causation which he illustrates with the example of the collective properties of the molecules of a table "causing" its apparent solidity. 

E. R. Kandel and L. R. Squire, Neuroscience breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind, Science, 290, 1113 (2000). 

Rose, S. P. R. (Ed.) (1998), Brains to Consciousness Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, Harmonsworth, Middlesex, UK. 

Rioch s illustrious career had started at Harvard in neuroanatomy, after which his interests moved progressively from the structure of the brain to the anatomy of the mind. His span of knowledge was truly awesome. 

Over the past century, chemists have discovered the ability to explain a whole range of biological phenomena, from the mechanisms by which genetic information is passed from parents to children to the processes by which certain compounds kill microorganisms. Is there any aspect about "being human" that chemists cannot explain Is it possible that even questions of how the brain and mind function can be answered by a better understanding of the biochemistry of the human body ... 

You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains still more with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment, and altrament you melt metals, build small and large furnaces, and use many vessels nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and you suffocate me with your sulphurous smoke. You would do better to mind your own business, than to dissolve and distil so many absurd substances, and then to pass them through alembics, cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."... 

To some extent, these ideas about consciousness are present in modern cognitive science, although with different forms and terminology, and the interested reader can refer to more specialized literature, for example the work by Damasio (1999) or by le Doux (2002). There are now many books on the subject of consciousness and many novel academic institutions devoted to the study of consciousness, with much emphasis on the relation between brain and mind. This is certainly remarkable in an area dominated by the molecular paradigm. Very little has yet been done to connect this with a bio-logical theory of life as a property from within, but I believe that the trend will move in this direction. In this sense, Francisco Varela has again been somewhat of a pioneer. 

This simple quatrain wonderfully epitomizes the essence of the human mind. Awareness of one s inner and outer environments is central to the functioning of the human mind. Consciousness is the enigmatic phenomenon that is crucial to the interface between brain and mind. General anesthetics are drugs that temporarily rob us of our consciousness GABA is a key molecular target for general anesthesia. 

As for the details needed to flesh out a new model, we must admit that there is more of an opportunity within our reach than there is substantial information in hand. The time is thus ripe for a major program of research that uses our now extensive knowledge of how conscious and unconscious processes are naturally generated and regulated in the diurnal evolution of our states of brain and mind as a foundation for a new comprehensive theory that encompasses the comparative, the evolutionary developmental, intra- and interindividual, and the social levels of analysis. 

One of the most dramatic examples of dissociation is the famous (or infamous) subjective out-of-body state of consciousness. In this state, the subjects have (what I assume to be) the illusion that the mind has departed from the body but is hovering nearby enough to actually observe that body. They are facilitated by more explicit suggestions and by anesthetic drugs that by themselves predispose the brain to marginal states. 

Psi information may flow from receptor to conscious mind to brain to behavior. This possibility gives importance to the mental processes of the percipient, even though they eventually affect the brain processes and overt behavior and so have the same final manifestations found in the behavioristic approach but in this case, the percipient is at least partially conscious of what is going on. 

The third possible information route is from psi receptor to unconscious mind to brain to behavior. The unconscious mind is an important and dynamic area of the mind that significantly influences our behavior and feelings but that is ordinarily inaccessible to direct awareness. I will use the concept of the unconscious mind both in this general sense and in the specific Freudian and Jungian senses. 

The second possible route is from brain to conscious mind to PK power generator. This is the commonsense route that we would ordinarily think of in a PK experiment. That is, the agent is consciously aware that the experimenter has requested that he exercise PK, and he consciously tries to operate the PK power generator (whatever it is) so that he can do the job. However, agents so seldom get direct PK effects (most of the time, the power generator does not operate) that our conscious minds clearly do not quite know what to do. The agent must simply hope that some sort of unknown process will intervene to activate the PK power generator and produce the PK effect. 

The third route takes this mysterious something that intervenes into account the route seems to be from brain to conscious mind to unconscious mind to power generator. There is very little that we can say about this route in terms of present knowledge. It simply reflects the fact that occasionally our conscious wishes do activate some unconscious part(s) of our minds and PK occurs. We would expect to see the same sort of personality flavoring as when ESP passes through the unconscious mind. 

Like our other models of psi processes, the model of telepathy has been chosen to fit in with commonsense assumptions about the nature of the universe, particularly about the identity of brain and nervous system functions and mental processes. And like the other models, this may not reflect reality so much as it reflects our attachment to our conceptions. Thus, the information-flow route that seems most likely (from external target stimulus via the sense organs to the brain to the transmitting process to the percipient, possibly with representation in the conscious or unconscious mind) may not be the case. The information-flow... 

Case Study 3 Imaging Alzheimer s Disease Chemical and Molecular Imaging of the Brain from Molecules to Mind... 

All of this activity has led to a wealth of ideas and seminal literature about alternative states of consciousness, the brain, the mind, and the relationships among them. Now in his seventies, Lilly continues his research privately at his Malibu, California, ranch. An integrated and accessible summary of his life and work, coauthored with Francis Jeffrey, is available in the book John Lilly, So Far. 

Vernon Mountcastle has called this unique collection of cells a brain-within-the-brain . By this, he means that they constitute a mode-switching mechanism that can automatically and forcibly change the microclimate of the rest of the brain. An analogy to the temperature and climate control system situated in the cellar of a modern home, but influencing all its rooms, comes to mind. 

Now the emphasis on the power of the formal approach to the study of dreaming should become clear even to those who still long for the mystique of fortune-cookie dream interpretation. We can see that, when the brain self-activates in sleep, it changes its chemical self-instructions. The mind has no choice but to go along with the programme. It sees, it moves, and it feels things intensely but it does not think, remember, or focus attention very well. This, in turn, shows clearly that our so-called minds are functional states of our brains. The mind is not something else - it is not a spirit, it is not an independent entity. It is the self-activated brain whose capacity for subjectivity remains to be explained but whose form of subjectivity can now be understood. 

In the womb (or uterus), at 30 weeks gestation, the human fetus is spending almost 24 hours of each day in a brain-activated state that constitutes a first level of REM sleep. At birth, an unequivocal REM sleep state occupies at least half of not less than 16 hours of sleep each day. This guarantees at least eight hours of automatic, off-line brain activation each and every day. Ask yourself why And let your answer run its full course to develop the human brain. To make up the mind - in a word to become an increasingly effective mover and an increasingly distinctive self. 

We are left with the tantalizing approximation of two models - one controlling sleep, the other controlling mood - which are about to collapse into each other, but not quite. Not yet. Those yearning for a unified theory of brain and mind must exercise patience and be satisfied that, in this case at least, the cup is well over half-full, whereas only 25 years ago it was completely empty. 

The brain-disabling principle states that as soon as toxicity is reached, the drug begins to have a psychoactive effect that is, it begins to affect the brain and mind. Without toxicity, the drug would have no psychoactive effect. 

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