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Paul Bloch's picture

Mind and Brain

Whenever a surgeon cuts open a head, s/he sees a brain but no mind. Is the mind is invisible? Does one need to see the mind for it two exist as a separate entity other than just a construction of the brain? I'm not able to answer these questions, but I do want to emphasize that I've never heard of anyone observing a physical mind (but maybe that doesn’t matter).

Like Caitlin Jeschke, I also subscribe to the 'hard science' school of thought. In class, I agreed with Dickinson and Crick in that the brain is the basis of all behavior. This is easily seen in the example with the boy and his hand over a flame. It is easy to explain that the overheated cells in the hand sent an electric signal to the brain which then sent a signal to the hand to move. However, it is very difficult to explain the concept of the mind in the same way. Nevertheless, Kedia et al. provided interesting observations that linked emotion with the brain. Using fMRI technique, they observed a change in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex after the subject was emotionally stimulated.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18211233?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Does this observed correlation between brain activity and emotion support the notion that mind is a construction of the brain? I think it does, but I admit that the answer is debatable. What do you think?

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