NeuroQuantology 2004 |Issue 2|Page 56-59 EDITORIAL, Oktar, N.

Mind the Brain

Mind the Brain

Guest Editorial Nezih Oktar
Editor, Turkish Journal of Neurological Sciences NeuroQuantology 2004; 2:56-59

The mind-body problem has lain at the heart of the way we think about human nature throughout modern thought. It became a problem for science in the early nineteenth century when efforts were first made to provide systematic observations on the relationship between mind and brain (Young, 1990). Today we are witnessing a revolution in neuroscience, as researchers chart the circuitry of memory, cognition, and emotion, offering the promise of a chemically based medicine of the mind (Kandel, 2000) But these same words would have been use as apt over 300 years ago, when neurology first emerged as an experimental science (Finger, 2000; Zimmer 2004) From the Greeks came the speculation that the mind is made up of a series of innate powers or faculties which were localized in the hollow ventricles of the brain: Sensation and Imagination in the anterior chamber, Reason in the middle, and Memory in the posterior. When attention shifted to the solid parts of the brain, the faculties were speculatively localized in different areas by different schools. When the innateness of the faculties was challenged by the belief that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, it was not the classification of the faculties which was questioned, but their origin. The question of the mind's role

in the economy of the organism in its intercourse with the environment was not a central issue. Attention was diverted from this by the separation of the mind from the brain and from the external world, and the related separation of man from other organisms. Both the empirical study of cerebral localization and the attempt to determine a set of functions which could explain the thought and behaviour of men and animals in their natural environments began with the work of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). While remaining agnostic on the philosophical mind-body problem, he thought he had discovered a method for demonstrating the correlation of innate faculties and identifiable brain areas. With the assessment of one of the major figures in the development of evolutionary psychology, G. H. Lewes, who said, Gall rescued the problem of mental functions from Metaphysics, and made it one of Biology (Young, 1990) One of the seven Da Vincian principles, corporalita expresses the balance of body and mind. The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise. Leonardos extraordinary physical gifts complemented his intellectual and artistic genius. He was familiar with his body. Walking, riding, swimming, and fencing were his preferred

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forms of regular exercise. Also, he believed that we should accept personal responsibility for our health and well-being (Gelb, 1998). The brain is the body's first line of defence against illness, and the mind is the emergent functioning of the brain. This mind-body approach incorporates ideas, belief systems, and hopes as well as biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy. Changing thoughts imply a changing brain and thus a changing biology and body. Belief systems provide a baseline for the functioning brain upon which other variables act and have their effects (Ray, 2004). Steno, a far more conservative student of the brain, castigated Willis and Descartes for their unwarranted certainty, I frankly and openly confess that I know nothing about it [the function of the brain], he declared and warned that it would be many generations before the brain was deciphered (Neuburger, 1981; Young, 1990) A fundamental goal in neuroscience is to link mind and brain, connecting changes in behaviour with changes in the brain. State-of-the-art brain mapping technologies allow non-invasive measures to be made across the lifespan. Both brain and behaviour are measured in the same individuals and across time. Scientists have discovered that learning is not equivalent over the lifespan. In many domains, young children learn more quickly and efficiently than adults, demonstrating "windows of opportunity" for learning. Humans are exquisite learning machines. Our brains are wired to learn in interaction with the world, re-programming them over time. Computers, on the other hand, do not readily learn by experience. This opens an exciting interface between computer and child learning. Life-span learning processes arise and continuously develop in a dynamically complex body, brain, and the mind they support as essential features of development and aging over the

life course. Life-span learning processes are established by evolutionary adaptive mechanisms, enriched by challenging environments, and continuously developed in supportive social structures. These ideas are derived from evolutionary biology and psychology, the cognitive sciences, life-span development and aging research, and adult development and learning studies. It is argued that life-span learning activities that challenge the body-mind-brain nexus are indispensable to optimize individual development and aging (Thorton, 2003). Evidence from developmental psychology suggests that understanding other minds constitutes a special domain of cognition with at least two components: an early-developing system for reasoning about goals, perceptions, and emotions, and a later-developing system for representing the contents of beliefs. Neuroimaging reinforces and elaborates upon this view by providing evidence that (a) domain-specific brain regions exist for representing belief contents, (b) these regions are apparently distinct from other regions engaged in reasoning about goals and actions (suggesting that the two developmental stages reflect the emergence of two distinct systems, rather than the elaboration of a single system), and (c) these regions are distinct from brain regions engaged in inhibitory control and in syntactic processing. The clear neural distinction between these processes is evidence that belief attribution is not dependent on either inhibitory control or syntax, but is subserved by a specialized neural system for theory of mind (Saxe, 2004). There is also an attempt at mapping the mind-brain-self relationship from a uniquely Jungian perspective (Wilkinson, 2004). The frontomedian cortex (FMC) has been shown to be important for coherence processes in language comprehension, i.e.,

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for establishing the pragmatic connection between successively presented sentences. The same brain region has a role during theory-of-mind processes, i.e., during the attribution of other people's actions to their motivations, beliefs, or emotions. The findings support the view of this cortex having a domain-independent functionality related to volitional aspects of the initiation and maintenance of nonautomatic cognitive processes (Ferstl, 2002). Specifically, person judgments were expected to activate cortical areas associated with theory of mind (ToM) reasoning. The results supported this prediction. Whereas action-related judgments about dogs were associated with activity in various regions, including the occipital and parahippocampal gyri; identical judgments about people yielded activity in areas of prefrontal cortex, notably the right middle and medial frontal gyri (Mason, 2004) Theory of mind (TOM), or "mentalizing," refers to the ability to attribute mental states to self and others. Inferring what people are thinking and feeling is an important aspect of human social interaction, and it is also an important aspect of both psychiatric diagnosis and treatment (Calarge, 2003). The ability to attribute mental states to others, and therefore to predict others' behaviour, is particularly advanced in humans. A controversial but untested idea is that this is achieved by simulating the other person's mental processes in one's own mind. If this is the case, then the same neural systems activated by a mental function should re-activate when one thinks about that function performed by another. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Rammani and Miall tested whether the neural processes involved in preparing one's own actions are also used for predicting the future actions of others. They provide compelling evidence that areas within the action control

system of the human brain are indeed activated when predicting others' actions, but a different action sub-system is activated when preparing one's own actions (Ramnani, 2004). Bimanual coordination, a prototype of a complex motor skill, has recently become the subject of intensive investigation. Whereas past research focused mainly on the identification of the elementary coordination constraints that limit performance, the focus is now shifting towards overcoming these coordination constraints by means of task symbolization or perceptual transformation rules that promote the integration of the task components into a meaningful 'gestalt'. The study of these cognitive penetrations into action will narrow the brain-mind gap and will facilitate the development of a cognitive neuroscience perspective on bimanual movement control (Swinnen, 2004). Posner believes that the study of neuroimaging has supported localization of mental operations within the human brain. Most studies have shown a small number of widely distributed brain areas that must be orchestrated to carry out a cognitive task. Although, as in all sciences, there are disagreements, the convergence of results in areas of attention and language in particular seem impressive. Moreover, the anatomical data has helped us to specify the computations that are used by the brain to carry out cognitive tasks. Building upon localization of cognitive operations, imaging methods are being applied to studies of the circuitry, plasticity and individual development of neural networks. Working together with cellular and genetic methods, there is movement towards a more unified view of the role of the human brain in supporting the mind (Posner, 2003). Strumwasser proposes the existence of four unique behavioural characteristics that

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distinguish Homo sapiens from its nearest evolutionary kin, the great apes. These are inventiveness, capacity for language, curiosity, and self-reflection or self-analysis. Some would counter argue that none of these features are "unique" to humans. For those in the mental health field, one would hope that this overview of the most highly evolved systems in human brain may provide a useful framework where creative therapeutic

processes can be applied to the ultimate beneficiary, the client or patient (Strumwasser, 2003). As you often heard the announcement of mind the gap while travelling in London Underground subway system, nowadays neuroscientists may recommend mind the brain during the journey throughout humankind evolution.

REFERENCES
Calarge C, Andreasen NC, O'Leary DS. Visualizing how one brain understands another: a PET study of theory of mind. Am J Psychiatry. 2003 Nov;160(11):1954-64. Ferstl EC, von Cramon DY. What does the frontomedian cortex contribute to language processing: coherence or theory of mind? Neuroimage. 2002 Nov;17(3):1599-612 Finger S: The Minds Behind the Brain Oxford Univ.Press, New York, 2000 Gelb MJ:How to think like Leonardo da Vinci Delacorte Press 1998 pp192-219 Kandel ER, Squire LR Neuroscience: breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science 2000; 290: 1113 Mason MF, Banfield JF, Macrae CN. Thinking about actions: the neural substrates of person knowledge. Cereb Cortex. 2004 Feb;14(2):209-14. Neuburger M: The Historical Development of Experimental Brain and Spinal Cord Physiology before 8.Flourens E.Clarke, Transl. And Ed., John Hopkins Univ.Pres.,Baltimore, 1981 Posner MI. Imaging a science of mind. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 Oct;7(10):450-453. Ramnani N, Miall RC. A system in the human brain for predicting the actions of others. Nat Neurosci. 2004 Jan;7(1):85-90. Epub 2003 Dec 21. Ray O. How the mind hurts and heals the body. Am Psychol. 2004 Jan;59(1):29-40 Saxe R, Carey S, Kanwisher N. UNDERSTANDING OTHER MINDS: Linking Developmental Psychology and Functional Neuroimaging. Annu Rev Psychol. 2004;55:87-124 Strumwasser F. The human mind: building bridges between neuroscience and psychiatry. Psychiatry. 2003 Spring;66(1):22-31. Swinnen SP, Wenderoth N. Two hands, one brain: cognitive neuroscience of bimanual skill. Trends Cogn Sci. 2004 Jan;8(1):18-25. Thornton JE. Life-span learning: a developmental perspective.Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2003;57(1):55-76. Wilkinson M. The mind-brain relationship: the emergent self. J Anal Psychol. 2004 Feb;49(1):83-101 Young RM: Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; reprinted New York: Oxford University Press, History of Neuroscience Series, 1990 Pp. xxiv+278 Zimmer C: Beyond the ivory tower:A distant mirror for the brain. Science 2004;303:43-4

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