Synaesthesia as a model system for understanding variation in the human mind and brain

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jamie Ward
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Model System ◽  
Mind And Brain

Synaesthesia as a Model System for Understanding Variation in the Human Mind and Brain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Ward
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Model System ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Key Questions

The aim of this article is to reposition synaesthesia as model system for understanding variation in the construction of the human mind and brain. People with synaesthesia inhabit a remarkable mental world in which numbers can be coloured, words can have tastes, and music is a visual spectacle. Synaesthesia has now been documented for over two hundred years but key questions remain unanswered about why it exists, and what such conditions might mean for theories of the human mind. This article argues we need to rethink synaesthesia as not just representing exceptional experiences, but as a product of an unusual neurodevelopmental cascade from genes to brain to cognition of which synaesthesia is only one outcome. Specifically, differences in the brains of synaesthetes support a distinctive way of thinking (enhanced memory, imagery etc.) and may also predispose towards particular clinical vulnerabilities. In effect, synaesthesia can act as a paradigmatic example of a neuropsychological approach to individual differences.

Is the Human Brain Unique?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack M. Gorman
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Brain Diseases ◽  
Expression Of Genes ◽  
The Future ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Brain

Some scientists now argue that humans are really not superior to other species, including our nearest genetic neighbors, chimpanzees and bonobos. Indeed, those animals seem capable of many things previously thought to be uniquely human, including a sense of the future, empathy, depression, and theory of mind. However, it is clear that humans alone produce speech, dominate the globe, and have several brain diseases like schizophrenia. There are three possible sources within the brain for these differences in brain function: in the structure of the brain, in genes coding for proteins in the brain, and in the level of expression of genes in the brain. There is evidence that all three are the case, giving us a place to look for the intersection of the human mind and brain: the expression of genes within neurons of the prefrontal cortex.

Betekent de monteerbare mens de antropologische heilstaat? Systematisch-theologische vragen

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-115
Author(s):  
Luco van den Brom
Keyword(s):  
Medical Technology ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Individual ◽  
God Machine ◽  
The Brain

Developments in medical technology summon the image of a novel ‘bionic’ humanity of the cyborg. Is it possible to entirely reproduce human beings and retain their identity? This technological enhancement aims at improving the physical make-up of the human phenomenon as an individual. Mankind thus assumes control over their mental evolution, creating a techno-sapiens. This prompts the question whether religious faith, emotion, intention or responsibility are physiological reproducible. Experiments with a ‘God Machine’ seem to evoke religious impressions and to deny the individual meaning of God and the human mind. Hick’s dualism of mind and brain as dancing partners is unsuccessful by actually personalizing the brain. This article proposes to describe mental and brain functions as complementary instead of tracing their physiological origin. Then, religious faith is not reduced to fides quae, as merely physiological reproducible information, but remains an existential attitude to life, as fides qua, by itself within the context of a community of believers.

scholarly journals Tensors and compositionality in neural systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 375 (1791) ◽  
pp. 20190306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea E. Martin ◽  
Leonidas A. A. Doumas
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Power ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Neural System ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Multiplicative Operator ◽  
Compositional Structures ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Behavioural Experiments

Neither neurobiological nor process models of meaning composition specify the operator through which constituent parts are bound together into compositional structures. In this paper, we argue that a neurophysiological computation system cannot achieve the compositionality exhibited in human thought and language if it were to rely on a multiplicative operator to perform binding, as the tensor product (TP)-based systems that have been widely adopted in cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence do. We show via simulation and two behavioural experiments that TPs violate variable-value independence, but human behaviour does not. Specifically, TPs fail to capture that in the statements fuzzy cactus and fuzzy penguin , both cactus and penguin are predicated by fuzzy (x) and belong to the set of fuzzy things, rendering these arguments similar to each other. Consistent with that thesis, people judged arguments that shared the same role to be similar, even when those arguments themselves (e.g., cacti and penguins) were judged to be dissimilar when in isolation. By contrast, the similarity of the TPs representing fuzzy (cactus) and fuzzy (penguin) was determined by the similarity of the arguments, which in this case approaches zero. Based on these results, we argue that neural systems that use TPs for binding cannot approximate how the human mind and brain represent compositional information during processing. We describe a contrasting binding mechanism that any physiological or artificial neural system could use to maintain independence between a role and its argument, a prerequisite for compositionality and, thus, for instantiating the expressive power of human thought and language in a neural system. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition’.

Mind and Brain: The Identity Hypothesis

1968 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 160-180
Author(s):  
R. J. Hirst
Keyword(s):  
Life Science ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Traditional Philosophy ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Fair Hearing ◽  
The Brain

Life Science Library now claims to examine ‘the most complex of all biological organs: the human mind’, and scientists quite commonly make no distinction between mind and brain — they delight in talking about the brain classifying, decoding, perceiving, deciding or giving orders. And while resisting the conceptual muddle involved in talking of the brain doing what persons do, the identity hypothesis tries to provide a philosophically respectable basis for the equation of mind and brain, maintaining that ‘mind’ is just a term for a group of activities and dispositions, and that these in turn are in some sense to be identified with brain activities or traces. On the other hand, from the point of view of religion and traditional philosophy the suggestion is completely unplausible — creative or inventive thought, and aesthetic, moral or religious experiences seem so far removed from mechanical or physiological processes that a good deal of softening up is necessary if any kind of identity theory is to get a fair hearing. This softening up is best carried out by considering the difficulties in the main rival philosophical view, interactionism.

scholarly journals Reading Minds in Greek Tragedy

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELIX BUDELMANN ◽  
PAT EASTERLING
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Linguistics

A notable intellectual development of the past decade or two has been the ever-growing interest in human consciousness and the workings of the mind. Sometimes grouped under the umbrella term ‘cognitive sciences’, diverse disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, computer science, and linguistics have all made major contributions to our understanding of the human mind and brain; and the large number of popular science books published in this area show that this can be an engrossing topic for the layperson as much as for experts. In this article we want to explore, at a rather general and non-technical level, how this focus on matters of cognition can help us think about an aspect of Greek tragedy.

scholarly journals Toward an integrative science of the developing human mind and brain: Focus on the developing cortex

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 2-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry L. Jernigan ◽  
Timothy T. Brown ◽  
Hauke Bartsch ◽  
Anders M. Dale
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Integrative Science

scholarly journals nature of human nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
André C Pieterse
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Mind

This article will argue from a Scriptural viewpoint that human nature is not reducible to a set of individual physical characteristics but is embodied and all the qualities of being human are mutually dependent. The substance for this statement is rooted in the biblical confession about the characteristics of the resurrected Body of Christ. This premise could assist the sciences in their quest to define human nature, specifically relating to the mind/brain problem. In addition, it could contribute to the need for consilience and lead scientific research into a more comprehensive understanding of the human mind and brain and its embedded nature.

scholarly journals Musicality and gene-culture coevolution: ten concepts to guide productive exploration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniruddh D. Patel
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Model System ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Cultural Invention ◽  
Or Gene

A growing number of researchers across the sciences and humanities theorize that human musicality arose via an interplay of cultural invention and biological evolution, or “gene-culture coevolution.” This chapter offers ten concepts to help guide productive cross-disciplinary discussions on this topic. Such interactions across traditional disciplinary boundaries are needed to propel deep explorations of human musicality. These explorations are important for the study of human origins because musicality may prove to be a model system for exploring cognitive gene-culture coevolution, a process increasingly thought to be central to the evolution of the human mind.

scholarly journals RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RAGA RAGINI AND ENVIRONMENT

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (9SE) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Varsha Agrawal
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Geographical Environment ◽  
Clean Environment ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Good Music ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Indian Music ◽  
The Mind

The mind and the mind attached to it are enamored by looking at our geographical environment and the body with a good clean environment leads the human mind towards peace.The focus of various raga-raganis in Indian music is a close relationship with the environment. It is well known that a good thinking, good thoughts, good music etc. all create a good environment.The flow of the river, the flow of air, the noise of trees all create a pleasant musical sound that is supernatural, universal. But in our Samaveda, the pronunciation of Oun, the chanting of mantras, the effect of its sound along with the eloquence, the resonance, the tone of the atmosphere, on the human mind and brain refreshes the mental environment along with the geographical environment and imparts consciousness and consciousness.Therefore, if along with biology, botanical and scientific efforts, all the raga-raginis of Indian music will be used for conservation of the environment, then it will be a perfect and complete tool. In this present age, environmental protection is an important issue and debate on it is to find its remedies and to present them on the path of world welfare. मन और उससे जुड़ा मस्तिष्क जिस प्रकार हमारे भौगोलिक पर्यावरण को देखकर उस पर आसक्त होता है और शरीर को अच्छे स्वच्छ पर्यावरण का साथ मानव मन को सुख शान्ति की ओर ले जाता है। भारतीय संगीत में विभिन्न राग-रागनियों का ध्यान पर्यावरण के साथ घनिष्ठ सम्बन्ध है। ऐसा सर्वविदित है कि एक अच्छा सोच, अच्छे विचार, अच्छा संगीत आदि सभी अच्छे पर्यावरण का निर्माण करते हैं। नदी का बहना, वायु का प्रवाहमान होना, वृक्षों की सांय-सांय सभी एक सुखद संगीत ध्वनि का निर्माण करते हैं जो अलौकिक है, सार्वभौमिक है। परन्तु हमारे सामवेद में ऊँ का उच्चारण, मंत्रों का उच्चारण उद्दात, अनुद्दात, स्वरित के साथ उसकी ध्वनि का वायुमण्डल पर असर मानव मन और मस्तिष्क पर भौगोलिक पर्यावरण के साथ मानसिक पर्यावरण को तरोताजा कर स्फूर्ति और चेतना प्रदान करता है। अतः पर्यावरण के संरक्षण हेतु यदि जैविकी, वानस्पतिकीय व वैज्ञानिक प्रयासों के साथ-साथ भारतीय संगीत की समस्त राग-रागिनियों का भी प्रयोग किया जाएगा तो वह उत्तम और सम्पूर्ण साधन होगा। आज के इस वर्तमान युग में पर्यावरण सरंक्षण महत्वर्पूण मुद्दा है व इस पर बहस होना इसके उपायों को खोजना और उनको प्रतिपादित करना विष्व के कल्याण के पथ पर अग्रसर होना है।

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