From Brain to Mind

The eyes provide the brain s window on the world. Vision provides most of our sensory input from the time of birth until death. More than 90% of all sensory input comes to us through our eyes. Sensations become perceptions that are the basis of thought, language, ideas, and concepts. Consciousness emerges from the activities in the brain, just as walking emerges from movement of the legs. 

The pupil acts as a pinhole through which photons of light pass through to the lens and reach the retina, where thousands of neurons fire and information passes across synapses in the rest of the brain. The chemistry of these synapses is the principal focus of molecular imaging. 

In the retina, there are two kinds of light-sensing cells, rods and cones, that convert incoming photons into neuronal action potentials. When cones are activated by photons of light, pigment molecules change shape and produce electrical action potentials that pass information throughout the brain. 

Millions of neuronal fibers carry action potentials from the retina to the visual cortex and subcortical regions. If the eye is damaged at a time when the visual cortex is developing, there will be lasting impairment of vision. Depth perception is chiefly the result of differences in the input from each eye. One eye becomes dominant early in childhood. 

Nobel Prize winners David Hubei and Torsten Weisel discovered how we perceive images. Neuronal genes encode the responses of different photoreceptors and send 

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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. 

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

Singer, W. (1998), Consciousness from a neurobiological perspective , in S. P. R. Rose (Ed.), Brains to Consciousness Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK, pp. 228-245. 

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 ... 

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. 

Inhalants are volatile substances that produce mind-altering effects ranging from euphoria to hallucinations. Effects on brain. 

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. 

An equally important assumption is that conflict and anxiety are ubiquitous, ongoing, and recurrent not so much because of an unconscious repetitive compulsion, but rather because life is always a competitive and uncertain interaction of unknowably complex variables. In that sense, therapy is indeed interminable if one expects to rid the world and the brain-mind of its intrinsic chaotic properties. Rather than vainly hoping to get to the bottom of it, we should try our best to stay on top of it while fully realizing that despite our most nimble balancing efforts we will all get out of whack from time to time. 

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. 

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... 

At the June 1985 Consensus Conference on ECT, critics and advocates of ECT debated the issue of efficacy. The advocates were unable to come forth with a single study showing that ECT had a positive effect beyond 4 weeks. Many studies showed no effect, and in the positive studies, the improvements were not dramatic. That the treatment had no positive effect after 4 weeks confirmed the brain-disabling principle since 4 weeks is the approximate time for recovery from the most mind-numbing effects of the ECT-induced acute organic brain syndrome or delirium. 

Keep in mind that if you or I as therapists cannot seem to help some of our patients, the alternative answer is not drugs. The alternative could be another therapist or no therapy at all. No treatment at all is better than being subjected to toxic chemicals that cross the blood-brain barrier and interfere with higher human functions. With a clear brain and mind, people can take advantage of all the healing opportunities afforded by life, from support groups and workshops to community activities and religious worship. 

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