Disorders of consciousness, memory, and will

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-86
Author(s):  
Walter Glannon
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorder ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disorders Of Consciousness ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Flexible Behavior ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter examines major psychiatric disorders as disorders of consciousness, memory, and will. All of these disorders involve disturbances in how the brain processes and integrates information about the body and external world. Distorted mental content in these psychopathologies impairs the capacity to consider different action plans, and to form and execute particular plans in particular actions. Dysfunctional mental states correlating with dysfunctional neural states impair the capacity for flexible behavior and adaptability to the environment. This dysfunction also impairs the capacity for insight into a psychiatric disorder and understanding the need for and motivation to seek treatment.

scholarly journals Ecstasy from a physiological point of view

1982 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 74-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaj Björkqvist
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Biological Study ◽  
Physiological Basis ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
Psychosomatic Diseases ◽  
The Brain

The biological study of man is one of today's most rapidly advancing sciences. There is no reason for not utilizing these methodologies of research and the knowledge already gained when studying ecstasy and other similar religious phenomena. Drugs have been used in all parts of the world as an ecstasy technique. Since mental states and physiological correlates always accompany each other, it is obvious that the human mind can be affected by external means, for instance by drugs. But the opposite is also true; mental changes affect the body, as they do in the case of psychosomatic diseases. Ecstasy is often described as an extremely joyful experience; this pleasure must necessarily also have a physiological basis. It is of course too early to say anything for certain, but the discovery of pleasure centres in the brain might offer an explanation. It is not far-fetched to suggest that when a person experiences euphoric ecstasy, it might, in some way or other, be connected with a cerebral pleasure center. Can it be, for example, that religious ecstasy is attained only by some mechanism triggering off changes in the balance of the transmitter substances? Or is it reached only via a change in the hormonal balance, or only by a slowing down of the brain waves, or is a pleasure centre activated? When a person is using an ecstasy technique, he usually does so within a religious tradition. When he reaches an experience, a traditional interpretation of it already exists.

scholarly journals Seeing What You Feel: Affect Drives Visual Perception of Structurally Neutral Faces

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika H. Siegel ◽  
Jolie B. Wormwood ◽  
Karen S. Quigley ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Interocular Suppression ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Suppression Technique ◽  
Positive Stimuli ◽  
The Brain

Affective realism, the phenomenon whereby affect is integrated into an individual’s experience of the world, is a normal consequence of how the brain processes sensory information from the external world in the context of sensations from the body. In the present investigation, we provided compelling empirical evidence that affective realism involves changes in visual perception (i.e., affect changes how participants see neutral stimuli). In two studies, we used an interocular suppression technique, continuous flash suppression, to present affective images outside of participants’ conscious awareness. We demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more smiling when paired with unseen affectively positive stimuli. Study 2 also demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more scowling when paired with unseen affectively negative stimuli. These findings have implications for real-world situations and challenge beliefs that affect is a distinct psychological phenomenon that can be separated from cognition and perception.

Embodiment and Phenomenal Consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-56
Keyword(s):  
Motor System ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Qualitative Properties ◽  
Processing Control ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Can the imaginary brains described in Chapter 1 have only representations of perceived patterns, objects, and events? Can hierarchical structures of neurons also represent feelings, beliefs, emotions, and other higher mental states? Creating feelings requires giving emotional perceptions, memories, plans, beliefs, and intentions. How can this be achieved? How are perceived objects and events using their significance for the fate of the conscious system? Do they meet the various needs of the system? In this chapter we show that to achieve this goal, to feel qualia and to create phenomenal awareness, it is necessary to embody the mind. Mental states, such as thoughts and desires, contain intentional content that can be described by referring to something that we expect or believe. Another category are sensory feelings that do not contain intentional content but instead have different qualitative properties like perceptions, impressions, and sensations. The authors indicate four main domains of cooperation between the body and the brain, so that the mind generated in the system has phenomenal consciousness. These domains are 1) The homeostatic system. The body or housing may contain sensors informing the brain about the internal conditions of the body. The signals from these sensors can complement the information coming from the external senses. 2) The motor system. The housing and body, together with the motor system, allow an individual to manipulate objects in the environment and its own body in the environment. The effects of these manipulations can broaden the experience and allow for their evaluation. 3) Participatory analysis. The body or housing can be used to predict, analyze, and plan activities by making calculations through a physical process. 4) The global states of the organism. Internal power supply parameters, information-processing speed, dynamics of operation, and sensitivity thresholds for internal and external sensors can affect performance, the results of evaluation of sensations, and the shape of neural representations. This assumption makes it possible to explain how the imaginary mind can feel subjective impressions, the qualia that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness. The bodily reactions to the sensory stimuli reaching the brain can give value to individual feelings, and emotions. Feeling hardness or smoothness, assessing the attractiveness of smells, judging the importance of sounds, and evaluating the favor of the environment based on images all go beyond the direct response of the senses. The entire brain is involved in the creation of a conscious mind, along with sensory processing, control of movements, memories, predictions, and all other brain structures. This is an emergent phenomenon that is not reflected in any part of the brain's apparatus. In this chapter, the authors explain to what extent we can be aware of our feelings, how far we can understand the world around us and our place in it, how we can consciously direct our thoughts, and how we can focus attention on something.

Behavior Control, Meaning, and Neuroscience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Glannon
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Behavior Control ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Efferent System ◽  
Flexible Behavior ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Environmental Demands

Neuroscience challenges our beliefs about agency and autonomy because it seems to imply that we have no control of our behavior: most brain processes are not transparent to us, we have no direct access to the efferent system, and we only experience the sensorimotor consequences of our unconscious motor plans. In this chapter, Walter Glannon argues that although unconscious processes drive many of our actions, this does not imply that conscious mental states have no causal role in our behavior and that we have no control over it. He argues that some degree of unconscious neural constraint on conscious mental states is necessary to modulate thought and action and promote flexible behavior and adaptability to environmental demands. He maintains that a nonreductive materialist account of the mind–brain relation makes it plausible to claim that mental states can cause changes in physical states of the brain.

An Investigation into the Fragility and Solubility of the Red Blood-cells in Mental Disease

1927 ◽  
Vol 73 (301) ◽  
pp. 257-265
Author(s):  
Margaret Scoresby-Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Red Blood Cells ◽  
Blood Cells ◽  
Mental Disease ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Brain

The objects of this investigation were to find out in what respect the resistance to hæmolysis of the red blood-corpuscles differs in mental disease from the normal, and to make a contribution towards the elucidation of pathological mental states and their relationship to pathological states of organs of the body other than the brain.

scholarly journals Restriction of Manganese Intake Prevents the Onset of Brain Manganese Overload in Zip14−/− Mice

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (13) ◽  
pp. 6773
Author(s):  
Yuze Wu ◽  
Guojun Wei ◽  
Ningning Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Small Intestine ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Manganese Transport ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into

As a newly identified manganese transport protein, ZIP14 is highly expressed in the small intestine and liver, which are the two principal organs involved in regulating systemic manganese homeostasis. Loss of ZIP14 function leads to manganese overload in both humans and mice. Excess manganese in the body primarily affects the central nervous system, resulting in irreversible neurological disorders. Therefore, to prevent the onset of brain manganese accumulation becomes critical. In this study, we used Zip14−/− mice as a model for ZIP14 deficiency and discovered that these mice were born without manganese loading in the brain, but started to hyper-accumulate manganese within 3 weeks after birth. We demonstrated that decreasing manganese intake in Zip14−/− mice was effective in preventing manganese overload that typically occurs in these animals. Our results provide important insight into future studies that are targeted to reduce the onset of manganese accumulation associated with ZIP14 dysfunction in humans.

The Visible Invisible

Neuro ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Rose ◽  
Joelle M. Abi-Rached
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Brain Structure ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Structural Imaging ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter explores the diverse attempts to render “mind” thinkable by means of images. Advances in clinical medicine from the nineteenth century onward went hand in hand with the penetration of the gaze of the doctor into depths of the body itself. There are now many examples of analogous advances linked to the structural imaging of the brain—in the detection of tumors, the identification of lesions, and the mapping of the damage caused by injury or stroke. Thanks to such images, the mind of the neuroscientist, the neurologist, and the psychiatrist now seem able to “walk among the tissues themselves.” Yet, however similar the images of brain function are to those of brain structure, they mislead if they seem to allow the mind of the neuroscientist to walk among thoughts, feelings, or desires. Technology alone, even where it appears to measure neural activity, cannot enable the gaze to bridge the gap between molecules and mental states.

The Definition of the Human Mind in Its Derivation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Finite Minds

This chapter analyzes the passages in which Spinoza develops his definition of the human mind. It begins by reading 2p11 as denying that the mind is something like a bearer of mental states. Next, the chapter argues that, in claiming that the mind is part of the infinite intellect, Spinoza is not referring to the mind’s activity but rather defending holism with respect to mental content. Through an examination of the wording of 2p12, the chapter shows that, contrary to most interpretations, Spinoza does not assume that the human mind perceives any affections of the body. The chapter concludes by showing how, by identifying the mind with the idea of the body, Spinoza solves the problem of the numerical difference between finite minds. Altogether, the chapter shows that, for Spinoza, the human mind is not an idea that God cognizes but the awareness by which we identify our own body.

scholarly journals Functional roles of three cues that provide nonsynaptic modes of communication in the brain: electromagnetic field, oxygen, and carbon dioxide

2018 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 356-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi F. Agnati ◽  
Diego Guidolin ◽  
Guido Maura ◽  
Manuela Marcoli
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Metabolic Substrates ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
The Brain

The integrative actions of the brain depend on the exchange of information among its computational elements. Hence, this phenomenon plays the key role in driving the complex dynamics of the central nervous system, in which true computations interact with noncomputational dynamical processes to generate brain representations of the body and of the body in the external world, and hence the finalistic behavior of the organism. In this context, it should be pointed out that, besides the intercellular interactions mediated by classical electrochemical signals, other types of interactions, namely, “cues” and “coercions,” also appear to be exploited by the system to achieve its function. The present review focuses mainly on cues present in the environment and on those produced by cells of the body, which “pervade” the brain and contribute to its dynamics. These cues can also be metabolic substrates, and, in most cases, they are of fundamental importance to brain function and the survival of the entire organism. Three of these highly pervasive cues will be analyzed in greater detail, namely, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and electromagnetic fields (EMF). Special emphasis will be placed on EMF, since several authors have suggested that these highly pervasive energy fluctuations may play an important role in the global integrative actions of the brain; hence, EMF signaling may transcend classical connectionist models of brain function. Thus the new concept of “broadcasted neuroconnectomics” has been introduced, which transcends the current connectomics view of the brain.

The Reception of Greek Science in Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Wessel
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
De Hominis Opificio ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Medical Writers

AbstractOne of the most significant philosophical questions that Gregory of Nyssa grappled with in his anthropological treatise, De hominis opificio, was how intelligible mind, the image of God that the human person contained, might possibly exist in the physically-circumscribed limits of the corporeal body. Gregory addressed this question by engaging in a medical controversy that was current in his day: where in the body was the reasoning faculty located? Against those who placed this faculty in the brain, Gregory argued that certain mental states and afflictions were due to physical conditions suffered by the body and, therefore, had nothing to do with the reasoning faculty being confined to the brain. I conclude that Gregory's selective use of the anatomical investigations of Galen and the Greek medical writers helped him construct a unified theory of the human person in which the intelligible activity of mind both interacted freely with the physical body and depended upon the body functioning naturally for the complete expression of its divine rationality.

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