Mind-brain Relationship Research Articles

Brain organoids and organoid intelligence from ethical, legal, and social points of view.

Human brain organoids, aka cerebral organoids or earlier "mini-brains", are 3D cellular models that recapitulate aspects of the developing human brain. They show tremendous promise for advancing our understanding of neurodevelopment and neurological disorders. However, the unprecedented ability to model human brain development and function in vitro also raises complex ethical, legal, and social challenges. Organoid Intelligence (OI) describes the ongoing movement to combine such organoids with Artificial Intelligence to establish basic forms of memory and learning. This article discusses key issues regarding the scientific status and prospects of brain organoids and OI, conceptualizations of consciousness and the mind-brain relationship, ethical and legal dimensions, including moral status, human-animal chimeras, informed consent, and governance matters, such as oversight and regulation. A balanced framework is needed to allow vital research while addressing public perceptions and ethical concerns. Interdisciplinary perspectives and proactive engagement among scientists, ethicists, policymakers, and the public can enable responsible translational pathways for organoid technology. A thoughtful, proactive governance framework might be needed to ensure ethically responsible progress in this promising field.

Rememoração da Experiência de Morte: transcendendo o modelo cerebrocêntrico da consciência

To explore the scientific approach to Recalled Experience of Death (RED) and correlate it with the philosophical foundations of Family and Community Medicine to expand the understanding of the human consciousness. Non-systematic review on PubMed database for relevant “prospective studies” on “near-death experience”. Five prospective studies documented RED phenomenon occurrences during clinical death. RED-studies strengthen an organismic model of existence and challenge consciousness concept as epiphenomenon of brain activities. This prompts a new understanding of mind-brain relationship inspired by quantum mechanics unified informational field, i.e., consciousness as non-local. This knowledge can help healthcare professionals in dealing with patients with existential problems as in mental health, palliative care, and spiritual issues. RED-studies epitomise a pre-paradigmatic stage in the construction of a new concept of human consciousness in relation to the brain.

Human Life is Like a Virtual Game with an Evolutionary Aim

It is well known that our mind can perceive the world around us in a limited, distorted and sometimes virtual way. In this regard, a cognitive theory speculated that human beings can evolve in a Darwinian way in order to fit their daily tasks, instead of demanding the truth. Moreover, that theory renounced questioning about the world inside us, I.e. the brain-mind relationship. This question was faced by “The Bignetti Model” (TBM), starting from the evidence that: 1) Since the birth, the mind emerges from the brain as a Tabularasa; 2) Free will (FW) and then also the FW-possessing Ego are illusions of the mind; 3) The mind exhibits a functional dual state: UM) the unconscious (implicit) mind that is characterized by a biophysical-biochemical language; CM) the conscious (explicit) mind that corresponds to the thinking function, typically elaborating inner-outer speech (based on the mother’s tongue language), images, music, mathematics etc.; 4) UM and CM exhibit the same probabilistic-deterministic mechanism of the brain and cooperate for cognition and behaviour, to this aim they reciprocally translate their languages by a mysterious way. According to TBM, UM reacts to perturbing stimuli (the so-called “voluntary actions”); later, their feedback signals make CM aware. Due to the illusion of possessing FW (Ego- FW), CM believes of deciding those reactions (the Sense-of-Responsibility); then, CM critically uploads credits or faults of the experience just lived into Long-Term-Memory (LTM). Thus, UM will find useful pieces of information for future reactions. In synthesis, our life is like a virtual game in which UM is the avatar that moves in the game; while CM is the player; by learning and memorizing the avatar’s “prior” action probability, the player will increase the success of the avatar’s “posterior” action probability. The mechanism of our virtual life is in accordance with Bayesian learning theory. In conclusion, the more sophisticated is CM’s reasoning of animal species, the higher they will evolve.

Comparative analysis of multifaceted neural effects associated with varying endogenous cognitive load

Contemporary neuroscience has firmly established that mental state variation concurs with changes in neural dynamic activity in a complex way that a one-to-one mapping cannot describe. To explore the scenario of the multifaceted changes in neural dynamics associated with simple mental state variation, we took cognitive load – a common cognitive manipulation in psychology – as a venue to characterize how multiple neural dynamic features are simultaneously altered by the manipulation and how their sensitivity differs. Electroencephalogram was collected from 152 participants performing stimulus-free tasks with different demands. The results show that task demand alters wide-ranging neural dynamic features, including band-specific oscillations across broad frequency bands, scale-free dynamics, and cross-frequency phase-amplitude coupling. The scale-free dynamics outperformed others in indexing cognitive load variation. This study demonstrates a complex relationship between cognitive dynamics and neural dynamics, which points to a necessity to integrate multifaceted neural dynamic features when studying mind-brain relationship in the future.

Neurotechnologies and brain codes: the importance of legislation in deconstructive key

In the article, ethical conflicts arising from the application of neurotechnologies in the human body were analyzed. Although these external devices were presented as potential solutions to certain pathologies, it was observed that they could also be used in healthy individuals and interfere with brain activity, thereby generating the main concern around neuro-rights. However, to carry out this investigation, the focus was on the mind-brain relationship and moral dilemmas. Finally, a connection was established between neuroscience and Derridean and Nancyan thought. This allowed for an understanding, from an interpretative reading of the French philosopher's thought, of the interpretation of writing as brain codes and the urgency of legislating neuro-rights in the face of a potentially dangerous future

Knowledge of Mental States and the Mind-Brain Relationship. Brief Approach to the Philosophy of Arturo Rosenblueth

Comprender la propuesta filosófica de Arturo Rosenblueth. Método: Construcción teórica a través de revisión bibliográfica. Resultados: La filosofía de Arturo Rosenblueth se comprende a partir de siete postulados que atraviesan cuestiones de filosofía de la mente y epistemología. Conclusión: Si la naturaleza de los estados mentales y la relación entre mente-cerebro son temas centrales de la filosofía de Arturo Rosenblueth, entonces es una filosofía que enfrenta problemas sumamente difíciles.

Consciousness and the mind-brain-body-world relationship: towards a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach.

The aim of this paper is to overview the main epistemological implications of the scientific approach to consciousness and the mind-brain relationship, undergone a lively debate in the past decades by strict materialist monist and dualist stances. Their limits, as well as the limits of reductionism and the shortcomings of classical Western thought, suggest the need for a broader perspective. Actually, a transdisciplinary approach helps overcoming the limits and incompleteness of single axiomatic disciplines. Likewise, a transcultural, metaphilosophical approach allows to understand key concepts and meanings common to different philosophies and cultures and properly face them beyond the multiplicity and ostensible oddity of forms. This approach seems to be appropriate in the study of consciousness and subjective phenomena, where the first-person perspective and the meaning of the experience are the condition sine qua non for their comprehension.

Heat and Pain Identity Statements and the Imaginability Argument

Even after many years of empirical and conceptual research there are underlying controversies which lead scholars to dispute identity theory. One of the most influential examples is Kripke’s modal argument leading to the rejection of the claim that pain and C-fibres firing are identical. The aim of the first part of the paper is to expose that Kripke does not rigorously distinguish the meaning of individual relata entering the identity relation, and therefore his claim about the faultiness of the analogy between propositions “heat is molecular motion”, and “pain is C-fibres firing”, is mistaken. Moreover, whilst much emphasis within metaphysics of mind-brain relations has been placed upon conscious phenomenal states, it might be worthwhile to also consider cases of unconscious phenomenal states. If one admits the unconscious phenomenal states, such as unconscious pain, then, Kripke’s claim is further discredited by the fact that even pain can be individuated through its contingent property. Identity statements about pain could therefore be analogous to any other identity statements. The second part of the paper focuses on the relevance of the modal argument in confrontation with empirical evidence. It argues against the assumption embedded in the modal argument that an identical neurobiological pattern occurs regardless of whether conscious pain is present or completely absent.

Quantum aspects of the brain-mind relationship: A hypothesis with supporting evidence

If all aspects of the mind-brain relationship were adequately explained by classical physics, then there would be no need to propose alternatives. But faced with possibly unresolvable puzzles like qualia and free will, other approaches are required. In alignment with a suggestion by Heisenberg in 1958, we propose a model whereby the world consists of two elements: Ontologically real Possibles that do not obey Aristotle's law of the excluded middle, and ontologically real Actuals that do. Based on this view, which bears resemblance to von Neumann's 1955 proposal (von Neumann, 1955), and more recently by Stapp and others (Stapp, 2007; Rosenblum and Kuttner, 2006), measurement that is registered by an observer's mind converts Possibles into Actuals. This quantum-oriented approach raises the intriguing prospect that some aspects of mind may be quantum, and that mind may play an active role in the physical world. A body of empirical evidence supports these possibilities, strengthening our proposal that the mind-brain relationship may be partially quantum.

A Possible Case of Censorship of Submissions on the Nature of Consciousness

To advance the scientific understanding of consciousness, one should be open to theoretical pluralism to freely develop and rigorously test a wide diversity of paradigm candidates and communicate the ideas and findings to the scientific community. Science development is jeopardized when journals tend to present a field’s state-of-the-art findings in a biased or misguided way or suppress investigations of a particular perspective. We describe the challenges and pitfalls we faced as guest editors during the editorial review process of a special issue of the journal Frontiers on “The Nature of Consciousness” and how we responded to it. We describe and discuss how the journal staff overruled our editorial role to enforce what was very likely academic censorship. We then offer a couple of recommendations to authors and editors that may face similar issues. We believe that following these recommendations will ultimately contribute to practical and theoretical advances in the understanding the nature of consciousness and the mind–brain relation.

Some Thoughts on AI Stimulated by Michael Wooldridge’s Book “The Road to Conscious Machines. The Story of AI”

Following a brief over view of the contents of Michael Wooldridge's book I give an account of my own background in computing and AI. I then cover a range of topics stimulated by reading the book including machine learning's relationship to AI, applications to medical areas, the need to consider probabilistic effects on decisions, the importance of self-reproduction and whether AI can be made moral. I finish with a discussion of the mind–brain relationship and what makes us human.

Science in Theology: Encounters between Science and the Christian Tradition

Science in Theology: Encounters between Science and the Christian Tradition

Anomalous Cognition

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the results of all meta-analyses on anomalous cognition conducted between 1989 and 2021 in order to find moderators associated with greater effect sizes. Method: We included all meta-analyses of studies related to anomalous cognition published up to 2021. Results: Our dataset, accumulated over more than 80 years of investigation, refers to 11 meta-analyses related to six different states of consciousness. The evidence clearly shows that anomalous cognition seems possible and its effects can be enhanced by using a combination of some non-ordinary or altered states of consciousness (e.g., dreaming, ganzfeld, etc.), coupled with free-response procedures, or neurophysiological dependent variables. These conditions facilitate an alternative form of cognition seemingly unconstrained by the known biological characteristics of the sense organs and the brain. Conclusion: The accumulated evidence expands our understanding of the mind-brain relation and the nature of the human mind.

Neurodualism: People Assume that the Brain Affects the Mind more than the Mind Affects the Brain.

People commonly think of the mind and the brain as distinct entities that interact, a view known as dualism. At the same time, the public widely acknowledges that science attributes all mental phenomena to the workings of a material brain, a view at odds with dualism. How do people reconcile these conflicting perspectives? We propose that people distort claims about the brain from the wider culture to fit their dualist belief that minds and brains are distinct, interacting entities: Exposure to cultural discourse about the brain as the physical basis for the mind prompts people to posit that mind-brain interactions are asymmetric, such that the brain is able to affect the mind more than vice versa. We term this hybrid intuitive theory neurodualism. Five studies involving both thought experiments and naturalistic scenarios provided evidence of neurodualism among laypeople and, to some extent, even practicing psychotherapists. For example, lay participants reported that "a change in a person's brain" is accompanied by "a change in the person's mind" more often than vice versa. Similarly, when asked to imagine that "future scientists were able to alter exactly 25% of a person's brain," participants reported larger corresponding changes in the person's mind than in the opposite direction. Participants also showed a similarly asymmetric pattern favoring the brain over the mind in naturalistic scenarios. By uncovering people's intuitive theories of the mind-brain relation, the results provide insights into societal phenomena such as the allure of neuroscience and common misperceptions of mental health treatments.

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM(S) IN DESCARTES’ “MEDITATIONS” AND HUSSERL’S “CRISIS” (Part 2)

The main topic of this paper is the mind-body problem. The author analyzes it in the context of Husserlian phenomenology. The key texts for the analysis and interpretation are Descartes’ magnum opus “Meditations on the First Philosophy” and Husserl’ last work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”. The author claims that already in Descartes’ text instead of one mind-body problem, one can find two: the ontological mind-body problem (mind-brain relation) and conceptual one (“mind” and “body” as concepts). In Descartes’ “Meditations”, the ontological level is explicit, while the conceptual level is implicit. In Husserl’s “Crisis”, on the other hand, the situation is different: the conceptual level of the problem (as the opposition between transcendental phenomenology and natural sciences) is explicit, while the ontological level is implicit. Nevertheless, it seems that Husserl has answers to both the “traditional” as well as the “conceptual” mind-body problems.

Phineas Gage's great legacy.

ABSTRACT.The case of Phineas Gage is an integral part of medical folklore. His accident still causes astonishment and curiosity and can be considered as the case that most influenced and contributed to the nineteenth century's neuropsychiatric discussion on the mind-brain relationship and brain topography. It was perhaps the first case to suggest the role of brain areas in determining personality and which specific parts of the brain, when affected, can induce specific mental changes. In addition, his case contributed to the emergence of the scientific approaches that would later culminate in psychosurgery. Gage is a fixed element in the studies of neurology, psychology, and neuroscience, having been solidified as one of the greatest medical curiosities of all time, deserving its prominence.

The mind-body problem(s) in Descartes’ “meditations” and Husserl’s “crisis” (Part1)

The main topic of this paper is the mind-body problem. The author analyzes it in the context of Hus- serlian phenomenology. The key texts for the analysis and interpretation are Descartes’ magnum opus “Meditations on the First Philosophy” and Husserl’ last work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”. The author claims that already in Descartes’ text instead of one mind-body problem, one can find two: the ontological mind-body problem (mind-brain relation) and conceptual one (“mind” and “body” as concepts). In Descartes’ “Meditations”, the ontological level is explicit, while the conceptual level is implicit. In Husserl’s “Crisis”, on the other hand, the situation is different: the conceptual level of the problem (as the opposition between transcendental phenom- enology and natural sciences) is explicit, while the ontological level is implicit. Nevertheless, it seems that Husserl has answers to both the “traditional” as well as the “conceptual” mind-body problems.

The White Paper: Wilder Penfield, the Stream of Consciousness, and the Physiology of Mind

ABSTRACTWilder Penfield is justly famous for his contributions to our understanding of epilepsy and of the structure-function relationship of the brain. His theory on the relationship of the brain and mind is less well known. Based on the effects of the electrical stimulation of the cortex in conscious patients, Penfield believed that consciousness and mind are functions of what he referred to as the centrencephalic integrating system. This functional system comprised bidirectional pathways between the upper brainstem, the thalami, and the cerebral cortex of both hemispheres, and was the physical substrate from which memory, perception, initiative, will, and judgment arose. It was the source of the stream of consciousness and the physical basis of mind. This paper reviews how Penfield arrived at this conception of the mind-brain relationship. Although Penfield ultimately felt that he had failed in his attempt to unify brain and mind, his work shed new light on the relationship of memory to the mesial temporal structures and to the temporal cortex; and his association of consciousness and the brainstem preceded the conceptualization of the reticular activating system by a generation. In these, as in so many aspects of neurobiology, Penfield was prescient.

An Empirical Investigation of Alleged Mediumistic Writing: A Case Study of Chico Xavier's Letters.

The scientific study of mediumship can contribute to the understanding of the mind-brain relationship. This study investigated a letter written by the influential Brazilian "medium" Chico Xavier, whose authorship was attributed to a deceased person. We identified the letter's pieces of information that were objectively verifiable, and we analyzed their accuracy based on documents and on interviews with the deceased's relatives, and the likelihood of Xavier's access to the information via ordinary means. All the 29 items of verifiable information conveyed on the letter were rated as "clear and precise fit." The information conveyed was highly specific (e.g., names, dates, and specific events). Fourteen items (48.3%) conveyed information that was also very private. We concluded that ordinary explanations for accuracy of the information (i.e., fraud, chance, information leakage, and cold reading) were highly unlikely. We recommend further research on the phenomenon of mediumistic writing, particularly experimental controlled studies with exceptionally gifted mediums.

Isomorphism: Abstract and Concrete Representations

Looking at concrete representations of mathematical problems from an isomorphic perspective, this article suggests that every concrete representation of a mathematical concept is understood by reference to an underlying abstract representation in the mind of the comprehender. The complex form of every abstract representation of a problem is created by the gradual development of its elementary form. Throughout the process of cognitive development, new features are added to the elementary form of abstract representation, which leads to gradual formation of a fully developed abstract representation in the mind. Every developed abstract representation of a problem is the underlying source for understanding an infinite number of concrete isomorphic representations. Deep or abstract representations of a problem are shared by the concrete realizations or concrete forms of that problem. In other words, concrete representations of a problem are the realizations of a single abstract representation. This discussion is extended to mind-brain relationship and the possible isomorphism that could exist between mind and brain.