Tag: brain

Is the Mind Identical to the Brain?

Note: Dumb title. This was an essay assignment for the Mira Costa College class: Introduction to Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality (PHIL 101) delivered by Professor Alex Savone, Spring 2022

Introduction

In this essay ‘brain’ is used to refer to an instance of the physical entity whose outer edges are the sensing cells in our eyes, ears, noses, skin, and some organs, and the axon terminals that connect nerve cells to organs throughout a human body. These outer edge cells connect to the dendrites of roughly 100 billion neurons across roughly 100 trillion synapses.[1] Neurons resemble deciduous trees in winter. At one end are branches and twigs of dendrites that emanate from a central cell body. Leaving the body is a trunk-like structure, the axon, which terminates in a root-like structure. The tips of these ‘roots’, axon terminals, connect to dendrites in other cells via a tiny gap, a synapse. The outer sensory cells convert various physical phenomena that impinge on them into electron flows into an axon terminal. This flow triggers a flow of ions across a synapse to a dendrite of an adjacent neuron. Dendrites generate a flow of electrons into the cell body of these dendrites. Some of these flows are additive, some are subtractive. The cell body integrates these flows, and at some level sends a flow of electrons down the cell’s axon, which causes ions to flow across multiple synapses, and on to the next neurons, etc.[2] The speed of these electron/ion signals through a nervous system varies with the type of cell from 0.5 to 120 meters per second. [3] The billions of neurons in a brain interconnect in an intricate three-dimensional organic snarl. Each neuron connects to as many as 15,000 other neurons. [4] [5]

‘Mind’ is used in this essay to refer to all the sensations, feelings, thoughts, and intuitions that make up every person’s consciousness. Minds are not entities in objective reality. Minds are totally subjective entities. The only information anyone can have of another person’s mind is via body language and verbal and symbolic messages from that person. It is the great degree of similarity across individuals and cultures in these messages that allows us to conceptualize mind as an entity that can be examined and discussed.

Argument: Mind Is a Feature of Brain

Given the definitions above, the question that this essay assignment is suppose to address (Is the mind identical to the brain?) has an easy answer. Obviously, a physical entity is not identical to a non-physical entity. However, brains and minds are inextricably linked. This essay will argue that a mind is a feature of the way a human brain functions.

The only indication we have of the existence of a mind is communication from an individual person about what’s happening in her/his mind. But neuroscience now knows that such communication is associated with observable electro-chemical activity in that person’s brain. Investigating the connection between a brain and a mind is difficult. Early scientific evidence of this connection was demonstrated between 1928 and 1940 by the American-Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in a series of experiments on over 400 living human brains. The subjects were patients undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy. In such surgery the patient’s brain is exposed while the patient is conscious. Unknown to his subject, Penfield electrically stimulated regions of their brain and had the subjects report on what they experienced. The results were startling:

When stimulating the occipital lobe one patient reported “a star came down towards my nose”. Upon stimulating a region near the central sulcus, another patient commented “those fingers and my thumb gave a jump”. After temporal lobe stimulation, another patient claimed, “I heard the music again; it is like the radio”. She was later able to recall the tune she heard and was absolutely convinced that there must have been a radio in the operating theatre.

Electrically stimulating exposed brains during surgery to get a subject to report the associated effect in their mind obviously has limitations as a research tool. In the 1980s advances in molecular physics and electronics paved the way for the development of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machines that could detect increased electro-chemical activity in small regions of the brain. [6]

Not only have cognitive neuroscientists established a link between a brain and a mind, they have also now established that sometimes what appears in consciousness first appears in the brain. In Free Will, Sam Harris cites several experiments that demonstrate a firm link between brain activity as observed via activity-detecting instruments, and what a subject reported as a result:[7]

  • The physiologist Benjamin Libet used EEG [8]“to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move”[9]
  • Another lab extended Libet’s work using fMRI. “Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.” [10]
  • “More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.” [11]

A recent New Yorker article reported that cognitive psychologists armed with an fMRI machine can:

  • tell whether a person is having a depressing thought,
  • see which concepts a student has mastered by comparing her brain patterns with those of her teacher,
  • edit together crude reconstructions of movie clips of what you’ve watched, and
  • describe the dreams of sleeping subjects. [12]

Our new-found ability to construct machines (computers) that are capable of far more than ultra-fast logic and arithmetic can now provide some insight into how brains and minds might be related. Functioning computers have two major ‘parts:’ a physical part and a non-physical part. The physical part (hardware) provides a home for the non-physical part (software). An analogy with brain-mind is obvious.  A brain’s physical part, as described above, consists of an incredibly vast and intricate network of sensor cells and neurons that house an ever-active flow of electrons and ions. A brain’s non-physical part consists of the all the memories [13] that are stored in this flow of energy. Somehow each individual person has conscious experiences of the meaning of these flows as sensations, feeling, thoughts, and images in their mind.

At present, technology is not able to construct an analogue of mind. But to imagine how such an analogue might work, we must understand that a single computer can run many programs simultaneously. With that said, imagine that some of these programs (a brain-mind-interface) operate a visual screen while another set of these programs watches this screen (a protomind), and reacts to what it sees. What’s displayed on this screen can change in a few milliseconds. The protomind can react to these changes, also in a few milliseconds, by sending signals back to the brain-mind-interface, which can then make changes not only to the screen, but can also send signals to a robot (a physical body) to cause it to respond to what the protomind has seen on the screen. The brain-mind-interface and protomind are only loosely coupled. The brain-mind-interface automatically selects and displays only a small part of the constantly changing information in the rest of the brain The protomind reacts to what is displayed on the screen, but its reactions almost immediately affect what the brain-mind-interface displays. In this model of how a brain and a mind are linked, a mind is a feature of the way a human brain functions.

Mind is thus a feature of the evolution of life on this planet that has crammed more neurons per kilogram of body mass into the human skull than most other animals. It is also the case that some human neurons are distinctly different from other animals. There is speculation that this difference might have allowed the human brain to divert energy to other neural processes [like the creation of mind – ed.]. [14]

My imaginary model of how a human brain and human consciousness might be coupled leaves out a lot. It deals only with visual material. It ignores other features of mind such as thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc. None-the-less, it provides a model for some of the examples about the coupling between a brain and a mind described above. Also, an observant person will notice that she does not have much control over her conscious experience. For example, the first thing I do every morning is have a mug of coffee, or a cup of tea. As I walk downstairs, which of these I will have that day occurs to me without any conscious effort on my part. “Did I consciously choose coffee over tea?” No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence.” (Harris, S. 2012) [15]

Epilogue

Humankind now has comprehensive and coherent models for the entire universe in which it is embedded. The creation and continuing elaboration of these models is one of humankind’s more magnificent and significant achievements to date. Our understanding of our universe extends out 1026 meters to the edges of the expanding bubble of matter and energy that engulfs us, and down 10-35 meters to the murky, ever changing, ephemeral quantum interiors of the amazingly few elementary pieces of matter that are the building blocks of all that is. [16]

But there’s a gaping hole in our understanding of physical reality. How does the most intricate, subtle mechanism known to humankind, the brain, enable human consciousness? It is from consciousness that everything in our social universe has sprung; everything – all of our theology, philosophy, science, literature, music, art, comedy, etc. By what mechanisms does our human social universe emerged from our physical brain? And since everything in our social universe first appears in a mind, what can we do to ensure that we create a social universe that maximizes human potential for curiosity, creativity, empathy, etc. This is the final frontier!

Notes

[1] “The human brain alone contains around one hundred billion neurons and one hundred trillion synapses; it consists of thousands of distinguishable substructures, connected to each other in synaptic networks whose intricacies we have only begun to be unraveled.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience , retrieved 6/7/22

[2] https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/brain/brain-physiology/how-do-neurons-work How do neurons work?, retrieved 03/01/2022

[3] https://www.americorpshealth.biz/physiology/conduction-speed-of-nerve-fibers.html Conduction speed of nerve fibers, retrieved 03/01/2022

[4] In order to visualize how our brains are ‘wired’ we need to have some notion of the number of synapses (i.e., points of connection with other neurons) per neuron. However, in reality there are several types of neurons in the human brain and the average number of synapses per neuron varies widely. An average of 15,000 synapses per  neuron is cited in Total Number of Synapses in the Human Neocortex, UJMN: One+Two, Article 26, Fall 2010 https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4812&context=ujmm retrieved 03/12/2022.

[5] [1]See https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=Awr9.1Z27itiKc4pWqA2nIlQ;_ylu=c2VjA3NlYXJjaARzbGsDYnV0dG9u;_ylc=X1MDMTM1MTE5NTcwMgRfcgMyBGFjdG4DY2xrBGNzcmNwdmlkA2RNNWxpREV3TGpKekJrbUxXcGRtX2dwUk5qa3VNUUFBQUFEWFo2dzMEZnIDeWhzLXRycC0wMDEEZnIyA3NhLWdwBGdwcmlkA2ZHZkxMeEw1UTRldjhXeFNvRzIuRUEEbl9zdWdnAzEEb3JpZ2luA2ltYWdlcy5zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tBHBvcwMwBHBxc3RyAwRwcXN0cmwDBHFzdHJsAzMxBHF1ZXJ5A21pY3Jvc2NvcGljJTIwdmlldyUyMG9mJTIwYnJhaW4EdF9zdG1wAzE2NDcwNDY3MTA-?p=microscopic+view+of+brain&fr=yhs-trp-001&fr2=sb-top-images.search&ei=UTF-8&x=wrt&type=Y149_F163_202167_052721&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp#id=1&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F54%2Fb8%2Fc8%2F54b8c88fb4dfb25ac84418a88964b34c.png&action=click retrieved 03/12/2021, to get some idea of the complexity of the neural network in your brain. This picture in centered on a single neuron. Recall that your brain contains billions of neurons, each connected in the same way that you see here to other neurons.

[6] For those of us not versed in the recent advances in molecular detection technology, fMRI seems to border on the magical. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging , retrieved 03/07/2022):

Certain atomic nuclei are able to absorb radio frequency energy when placed in an external magnetic field; the resultant evolving spin polarization can induce a RF signal in a radio frequency coil and thereby be detected. In clinical and research MRI, hydrogen atoms are most often used to generate a macroscopic polarization that is detected by antennae close to the subject being examined. Hydrogen atoms are naturally abundant in humans and other biological organisms, particularly in water and fat. For this reason, most MRI scans essentially map the location of water and fat in the body. Pulses of radio waves excite the nuclear spin energy transition, and magnetic field gradients localize the polarization in space. By varying the parameters of the pulse sequence, different contrasts may be generated between tissues based on the relaxation properties of the hydrogen atoms therein.

[7] Harris, S. (2012). Free Will, Simon & Schuster.

[8] EEG Machine: An EEG machine is a device that records the electrical activity of the brain. It contains electrodes that can detect brain activity when placed on a subject’s scalp. The electrodes record the brain wave patterns and the EEG machine sends the data to a computer. https://www.emotiv.com/glossary/eeg-machine/ retrieved 03/07/2022.

[9] Libet, B, Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential): The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 106(3), 623-642.

[10] Haynes, J.D. (201). Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(1); 9-24. 7 to 10 seconds? Does not appear to be consistent with the 300 and 700 millisecond intervals reported elsewhere

[11] Haggard, P. (20110. Decision time for free will. Neuron, 69:404-406.

[12] Somers, J. (2021, Dec. 6). Head Space. The New Yorker, 30-35.

[13] ‘memories’ is being used generically – knowing how to tie your shoe involves having a memory of the steps involved.

[14] https://news.mit.edu/2021/neurons-humans-mammals-1110 , retrieved 03/07/2022

[15] Your first-thing-in-the-morning experience may be different. You may consciously access personal factors that you use to choose your morning beverage (or not). But stay tuned. Watch. How many of the questions, thoughts, images, feelings, etc. that you become aware of as your day unfolds did you willfully call into your consciousness?

[16] Scharf, C. (2017). The Zoomable Universe, Scientific American

Daneel Visits Princeton

“Good grief. What the devil? Who are you?” Dr. Norman exclaimed as he opened the door to his office at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

A good looking, youthful man, a complete stranger, dressed in what appeared to be some sort of iridescent lab coveralls, jumped up and said, “Excuse me Director Norman, I thought I might as well sit until you arrived.” The young man stood and extended his hand. “I’m R. Daneel from the 25th century. I’m really sorry to barge in on you like this, but I’m afraid my colleagues at the Princeton Temporal Exploration Institute blundered badly and sent me back in time rather than forward. I appeared here about five this morning and thought I might as well wait here until you came in.”

To say Dr. Norman was surprised would be an extreme understatement. His first reaction was that some Princeton undergraduates were up to their usual spring mischief. Ignoring Daneel’s outstretched hand he said, “Look Mr. Daneel, or whatever your real name is, I’m not in the mood to be part of some elaborate undergraduate joke. I’m calling security!”

“No problem, Director Norman, I’ll go quietly, but it you kick me out you are throwing away a good chance of making a Nobel prize level contribution to cognitive neuroscience.”

Taken aback, Dr. Norman responded sarcastically , “Oh, really? Just what makes you say so, Mr. Daneel?”

“Allow me to demonstrate, Director Norman.”

Daneel then proceeded to slide a finger over the mechanisms that held his lab coveralls and closed his lab shirt. As they fell away a dull grey metallic chest was exposed.

Dr. Norman gasped. But Daneel wasn’t finished.

He placed a finger on the side of his neck and the two panels that covered his chest slide back, exposing an intricate set of electro-mechanical mechanisms.

After a moment of speechlessness, Dr. Norman managed to sputter, “My god, you’re a robot!”

“Quite right, Director Norman; a robot the likes of which won’t appear on Earth for another three hundred years. But what’s important is that except for controlling some bodily functions that I lack; my brain and mind are functionally identical to yours. What’s more, not only will I be a willing subject on any neuroscience experiments your Institute would like to perform; I can also help you build sensor technology that will enable you investigate how my brain operates to create my mind.”

Dr. Norman’s eyes glistened. if R. Daneel was really as intelligent as he appeared to be on first sight, and if indeed his artificial nervous system had the same functional capabilities as a human’s, then yes, earth-shattering neuroscience results might be possible!

“Alright Mr. Daneel, clearly you are not part of an undergraduate prank. … Mister Daneel, is that correct?”

‘No Director, it’s Doctor Daneel Olivaw. My PhDs are in Human and Robotic Psychology, Computer Engineering, Computer Software, Artificial Intelligence, and Temporal Science.”

Dr. Norman raised his eyebrows, “Really?”

“Too many degrees? My mental processing speed is about four times that of an excellent human PhD student. Also, my life span is only limited by my manufacturer’s ability to keep replacing parts that wear out. Most 25th century sentient robots have earned at least six PhDs. It’s a way for our sponsors to maximize our usefulness.”

Dr. Norman’s knees were starting to give way. He sat down in the chair Daneel had just vacated. “Alright Dr. Olivaw, assuming that your offer might possibly result in my Institute achieving some neuroscience break-throughs, what do you want in return?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I need to build a machine that can send me back to the 25th century. I’ll need your help and the resources of the Institute to do that.”

Dr. Norman took a deep breath, “Ah. I see. Not an unreasonable request given the circumstances. But will an investigation into your artificially created mentality really yield useful information on the relationship between a human brain and a human mind?”

“I think so, Director. At any one moment I am conscious of only a small part of my memory. I can consciously tune into how my brain is managing my bodily activities, and willfully direct these activities, but normally I’m not conscious of them. Like a human, I experience my mind as a multi-media production that I have only some control over.”

“Well, that sounds like you might make a useful subject. We will need to be able to monitor your brain’s activity and correlate that with what you can report or demonstrate about what’s in your mind. Can you help us build the instruments we’ll need to that purpose?”

Smiling condescendingly Daneel said, “Yes, of course. In fact, we should get started on this right away.”

As his scientific curiosity started to override other concerns, Dr. Norman started planning. “Alright, we’ve got a empty office and adjacent lab that I can assign to you right now. I know Professor Baldassano will be wanting to put his current project on hold to start working with you immediately. I’m sure some of our other researchers and graduate students will also want to be involved. I assume you won’t mind if we immediately start a clinical assessment of your psychology and mental abilities.”

***

The clinical assessment of Daneel’s psychology revealed that his creators had indeed constructed an artificial human, at least from a psychological perspective. His rational abilities were essentially that of a highly intelligent human, just four times faster, and unfailingly accurate. The scope and intensity of his emotions were much reduced, but after allowances were made for the radical difference between Daneel’s artificial “biology” and that of a human, there remained a remarkable similarity.

The construction of instruments that could detect various external aspects of the dynamic functioning of Daneel’s brain proved easier than Dr. Normas anticipated. At the functional level Daneel’s brain was organized much like a human’s. Like a human’s it was an intricate network of “neurons” and “synapses.” One difference was that his brain contained about 600 billion “neurons” interconnected at 600 trillion “synapses.”[1] The volume occupied by his brain was about twice that of a human’s and was located in his chest cavity where it was easily instrumented to detect phenomena within Daneel’s “brain.” With Daneel’s help the Institute team was able to get real-time data on both individual “neurons” and a cluster of as many as 1024 “neurons.’ During the last stages of the investigation the team could get data on as many as 16 “neuron” clusters. This was important since it turned out that Daneel’s brain, like human brains, was organized by layers into functionally differentiated modules. [2]

Investigation began as soon as the initial instrumentation was ready. All the reported experiments on the link between a human brain and a human mind were repeated. The experiment reported by J. D. Haynes that measured the time between the acquisition of the image of a letter on a retina and when that letter was recognized in the mind yielded similar results.[5] Daneel’s timing was just four times faster. A similar result held for all the other experiments.

As experiment after experiment on Daneel produced functionally the same result as they had on humans, the team at PNI became more and more excited. They were putting the final nail in coffin of Descartes’s view that the body and the mind were two separate entities.[4] Here was indisputable evidence that the mind was a feature of physical complexity and not something outside of the physical universe.

***

“Well, Daneel, I guess this is good-by.”

“Yes, Director Norman, when I close this door I will be instantly back in my own time in the 25th century. Three microseconds later this time-warp chamber will self-destruct into a lump of metal. We’ve had a great time together. You and your team now have soild data to support the proposition that a mind is created by a physical brain. With this knowledge you will be able to design research projects that will eventually result in a Nobel prize. Unfortunately, none of the result we have obtained here can be published!”

“Oh, no?! How so?”

“When I am gone there will be no way to replicate our experiments. Good-by Director.”

***

Poof!

Notes

Research on the creation of artificial minds is currently underway. [5]

[1] A human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-many-neurons-are-in-the-brain-2794889 , retrieved 05/12/2022; google: number synapses human brain?, 05/12/2022. Daneel’s chest cavity is about 6 times larger than a human cranium

[2] Gazzzaniga, Michael. (2018). The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[3] Hayes, J. D. (2011). Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(10; 9-24.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism. retrieved 3/29/2022.

[5] Gallagher, Brian. (March 23, 2022) Robots Show Us Who We Are. Nautilus, New York.

Author’s Posting Comments

  1. An entertaining illustration of the plausibility that a brain creates a mind.
  2. A companion to Is the Mind Identical to the Brain?