scholarly journals The Perception, &c., of Time as a feature in Mental Disease

1874 ◽  
Vol 19 (88) ◽  
pp. 519-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. A. F. Browne
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disease ◽  
Cerebral Arteries ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Regular Sequence ◽  
Anterior Lobe ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Subjective Element ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Directing Attention ◽  
The Brain

The power or process by means of which Time is mentally recognised and estimated independently of, or before, its external and artificial measurement, has not received a clear or comprehensive solution at the hands of those who have dealt with the subject. Certain metaphysicians connect the idea of duration with that of extension, and conceive that the child, or the savage, may have acquired a notion of intervals, or interrupted extension, from seeing and feeling through the muscular sense the alternate extension and flexion of his limbs; all comparison of such events with the successive changes in objective phenomena, as in days and nights, being the result of subsequent experience. Certain others conceive that our notion of Time originates in our consciousness and observation of succession in our thoughts, feelings, and mental states, a succession which necessarily involves a series of changes separated in time, and order, and nature. Sir W. Hamilton, apparently aware of the difficulty of the problem, says that “Time is a form of thought,” and “if we attempt to comprehend Time, either in whole or in part, we find that thought is hedged in between two incomprehensibles.” Other philosophers, belonging to a more practical school, who may be claimed as psychologists, contend that the subjective element of Time is imparted by the communication of impressions upon the external senses to the sensorium, coming as these must always do in succession with intervals of different length, and, as they often do, of regular length and intensity. It will be observed that in all these hypotheses it is taken for granted that the mind is capable of directing attention to its own conditions, and, to a certain extent, of analysing these, of marking their course, their swiftness, or slowness, their regularity, or irregularity. On the other hand, the phrenologists contend that there is a primitive and special faculty connected with a portion of the anterior lobe of the brain, by which Time, or the succession of events and intervals, is perceived or becomes known to us. My own speculations formerly led me to the theory that the perception of rhythm, or regular sequence, in sensorial impressions was conveyed by the pulsations of the cerebral arteries, either to the whole brain, or to such portion of it as may take cognisance of internal movements or changes. Sir H. Holland, that noble veteran, that learned and travelled and philosophic physician, who has just passed from amongst us, dedicated a chapter in his “Medical Notes and Reflections,” p. 499, to the exposition of “Time as an element in Mental Functions,” in which his chief object is to show that ideas or different modes of mentalisation arise and are propagated in different degrees of velocity and intensity in Time in different temperaments, and in the same individual at different periods, in accordance with the predominant physical or mental condition.

scholarly journals The Perception, &c., of Time as a feature in Mental Disease

1874 ◽  
Vol 19 (88) ◽  
pp. 519-532
Author(s):  
W. A. F. Browne
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disease ◽  
Cerebral Arteries ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Regular Sequence ◽  
Anterior Lobe ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Subjective Element ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Directing Attention ◽  
The Brain

The power or process by means of which Time is mentally recognised and estimated independently of, or before, its external and artificial measurement, has not received a clear or comprehensive solution at the hands of those who have dealt with the subject. Certain metaphysicians connect the idea of duration with that of extension, and conceive that the child, or the savage, may have acquired a notion of intervals, or interrupted extension, from seeing and feeling through the muscular sense the alternate extension and flexion of his limbs; all comparison of such events with the successive changes in objective phenomena, as in days and nights, being the result of subsequent experience. Certain others conceive that our notion of Time originates in our consciousness and observation of succession in our thoughts, feelings, and mental states, a succession which necessarily involves a series of changes separated in time, and order, and nature. Sir W. Hamilton, apparently aware of the difficulty of the problem, says that “Time is a form of thought,” and “if we attempt to comprehend Time, either in whole or in part, we find that thought is hedged in between two incomprehensibles.” Other philosophers, belonging to a more practical school, who may be claimed as psychologists, contend that the subjective element of Time is imparted by the communication of impressions upon the external senses to the sensorium, coming as these must always do in succession with intervals of different length, and, as they often do, of regular length and intensity. It will be observed that in all these hypotheses it is taken for granted that the mind is capable of directing attention to its own conditions, and, to a certain extent, of analysing these, of marking their course, their swiftness, or slowness, their regularity, or irregularity. On the other hand, the phrenologists contend that there is a primitive and special faculty connected with a portion of the anterior lobe of the brain, by which Time, or the succession of events and intervals, is perceived or becomes known to us. My own speculations formerly led me to the theory that the perception of rhythm, or regular sequence, in sensorial impressions was conveyed by the pulsations of the cerebral arteries, either to the whole brain, or to such portion of it as may take cognisance of internal movements or changes. Sir H. Holland, that noble veteran, that learned and travelled and philosophic physician, who has just passed from amongst us, dedicated a chapter in his “Medical Notes and Reflections,” p. 499, to the exposition of “Time as an element in Mental Functions,” in which his chief object is to show that ideas or different modes of mentalisation arise and are propagated in different degrees of velocity and intensity in Time in different temperaments, and in the same individual at different periods, in accordance with the predominant physical or mental condition.

Mind, identity theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Ontological Categories ◽  
Great Merit ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

We know that the brain is intimately connected with mental activity. Indeed, doctors now define death in terms of the cessation of the relevant brain activity. The identity theory of mind holds that the intimate connection is identity: the mind is the brain, or, more precisely, mental states are states of the brain. The theory goes directly against a long tradition according to which mental and material belong to quite distinct ontological categories – the mental being essentially conscious, the material essentially unconscious. This tradition has been bedevilled by the problem of how essentially immaterial states could be caused by the material world, as would happen when we see a tree, and how they could cause material states, as would happen when we decide to make an omelette. A great merit of the identity theory is that it avoids this problem: interaction between mental and material becomes simply interaction between one subset of material states, namely certain states of a sophisticated central nervous system, and other material states. The theory also brings the mind within the scope of modern science. More and more phenomena are turning out to be explicable in the physical terms of modern science: phenomena once explained in terms of spells, possession by devils, Thor’s thunderbolts, and so on, are now explained in more mundane, physical terms. If the identity theory is right, the same goes for the mind. Neuroscience will in time reveal the secrets of the mind in the same general way that the theory of electricity reveals the secrets of lightning. This possibility has received enormous support from advances in computing. We now have at least the glimmerings of an idea of how a purely material or physical system could do some of the things minds can do. Nevertheless, there are many questions to be asked of the identity theory. How could states that seem so different turn out to be one and the same? Would neurophysiologists actually see my thoughts and feelings if they looked at my brain? When we report on our mental states what are we reporting on – our brains?

scholarly journals Music Composition from the Brain Signal: Representing the Mental State by Music

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Wu ◽  
Chaoyi Li ◽  
Yu Yin ◽  
Changzheng Zhou ◽  
Dezhong Yao
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Music Composition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Arousal Level ◽  
Sleep Stages ◽  
Biofeedback Therapy ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Potential Tool

This paper proposes a method to translate human EEG into music, so as to represent mental state by music. The arousal levels of the brain mental state and music emotion are implicitly used as the bridge between the mind world and the music. The arousal level of the brain is based on the EEG features extracted mainly by wavelet analysis, and the music arousal level is related to the musical parameters such as pitch, tempo, rhythm, and tonality. While composing, some music principles (harmonics and structure) were taken into consideration. With EEGs during various sleep stages as an example, the music generated from them had different patterns of pitch, rhythm, and tonality. 35 volunteers listened to the music pieces, and significant difference in music arousal levels was found. It implied that different mental states may be identified by the corresponding music, and so the music from EEG may be a potential tool for EEG monitoring, biofeedback therapy, and so forth.

The Physical Basis of Mental Disease

1912 ◽  
Vol 58 (242) ◽  
pp. 465-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivy Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disease ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Pathological Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
Normal Brain ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Nervous Disease ◽  
Perfect Adaptation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

In bringing forward some evidence which would point to the biological course followed by some forms of nervous disease to be considered, I would first of all accept as a working hypothesis two generalisations which apply to all forms of disease. The first of these generalisations is that there is essentially no difference in kind between a physiological and a pathological process. The distinction is an arbitrary one; the course of disease is distinguished from that of health only in so far as it tends to compromise the continuation of a more or less perfect adaptation between the organism and its surroundings. There is no tendency in Nature either to kill or to cure; she is absolutely impartial as to the result of a conflict between organisms and a host; and it is a matter of complete indifference to her as to whether toxins are eliminated or not. In the same way diseases of the mind are the manifestation of a perfectly natural relation of the organism, such as it is, to the environment. If the mental processes are abnormal, it goes without saying that the brain must be acting abnormally whether the stimuli to abnormal action originate in the brain itself or in some other part of the body. For example, if a child with pneumonia be suffering from delirium and hallucinations, as is not infrequently the case, this must be considered a perfectly natural outcome of the relation of the brain to its environmental stimuli outside and inside the organism. The actual stimuli may originate in the intestine from masses of undigested food and the stimuli may play on the brain rendered hypersensitive by the toxins from the lungs; the process and its manifestations, as well as the final outcome, are matters in which nature plays an impartial part. It cannot be admitted that there is any form of nervous disease which does not come under this generalisation. It has been argued by some authorities that because insidious forms of insanity are marked only by the slightest variation from the normal course of mental life, and that because the mental abnormalities are only modifications, and often easily explainable modifications, of normal mental processes, that the so-called insanity originates in these processes, and not in the material substratum of the organism. The fallacy of such an interpretation is obvious; it is tantamount to saying that slight albuminuria is the cause underlying early disease of the kidneys, or that a slight ódema may have something to do with the origin of circulatory disease. It is only natural that in the milder forms of mental disease the abnormal manifestations of brain activity should resemble normal mental processes; and even in the most advanced forms of mental disease there must be a close resemblance between abnormal ideation and conduct and perfectly normal ideation and behaviour. Even in advanced cases of Bright's disease the urinary elimination is more normal than abnormal; the abnormal constituents do not differ so much in kind as in degree from those of urine from healthy kidneys. It is not to be expected that in kidney disease bile or some other substance foreign to the organ would be the chief constituent of the eliminated fluid. The signs of insanity in any given case are the natural products of normal brain action mingled with the products of abnormal action. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility that under certain circumstances these abnormal products, such as delusions, hallucinations and perverted conduct, may not themselves be the direct stimuli to further abnormalities. The suicidal character of pathological processes is well seen in other organs of the body. A diseased heart, for example, is its own worst enemy; it not only fails to supply sufficient nutrition to the rest of the organism, but it starves itself by its inability to contract and expand properly, thereby increasing its own weakness. In the same way, certain phenomena of abnormal brain processes are in all probability due to the recoil on the brain of its own abnormal products in the matter of ideation and conduct.

Assumptions

The Age of Em ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Internal State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Short Delay ◽  
Input Signals ◽  
State Changes ◽  
Physical Variables ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The concept of whole brain emulation has been widely discussed in futurism ( Martin 1971 ; Moravec 1988 ; Hanson 1994b , 2008b ; Shulman 2010 ; Alstott 2013 ; Eth et al. 2013 ; Bostrom 2014 ) and in science fiction ( Clarke 1956 ; Egan 1994 ; Brin 2002 ; Vinge 2003 ; Stross 2006 ) for many decades. Sometimes emulations are called “uploads.” Let me now try to be clearer about the technological assumptions whose consequences I seek to explore. When I refer to a “brain” here, I refer not just to neurons in a head, but also to other supporting cells in the head, and to neurons and key closely connected systems elsewhere in the human body, such as the systems that manage hormones. Using that terminology, I assume, following a wellestablished consensus in the cognitive and brain sciences, that “the mind is just the brain” ( Bermúdez 2010 ). That is, what the brain fundamentally does is to take input signals from eyes, ears, skin, etc., and after a short delay produces both internal state changes and output signals to control muscles, hormone levels, and other body changes. The brain does not just happen to transform input signals into state changes and output signals; this transformation is the primary function of the brain, both to us and to the evolutionary processes that designed brains. The brain is designed to make this signal processing robust and efficient. Because of this, we expect the physical variables (technically, “degrees of freedom”) within the brain that encode signals and signal-relevant states, which transform these signals and states, and which transmit them elsewhere, to be overall rather physically isolated and disconnected from the other far more numerous unrelated physical degrees of freedom and processes in the brain. That is, changes in other aspects of the brain only rarely influence key brain parts that encode mental states and signals. We have seen this disconnection in ears and eyes, and it has allowed us to create useful artificial ears and eyes, which allow the once-deaf to hear and the once-blind to see. We expect the same to apply to artificial brains more generally. In addition, it appears that most brain signals are of the form of neuron spikes, which are especially identifiable and disconnected from other physical variables.

scholarly journals Common Brain Regions with Distinct Patterns of Neural Responses during Mentalizing about Groups and Individuals

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 1406-1417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Contreras ◽  
Jessica Schirmer ◽  
Mahzarin R. Banaji ◽  
Jason P. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Physical Attributes ◽  
Medial Pfc ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

An individual has a mind; a group does not. Yet humans routinely endow groups with mental states irreducible to any of their members (e.g., “scientists hope to understand every aspect of nature”). But are these mental states categorically similar to those we attribute to individuals? In two fMRI experiments, we tested this question against a set of brain regions that are consistently associated with social cognition—medial pFC, anterior temporal lobe, TPJ, and medial parietal cortex. Participants alternately answered questions about the mental states and physical attributes of individual people and groups. Regions previously associated with mentalizing about individuals were also robustly responsive to judgments of groups, suggesting that perceivers deploy the same social-cognitive processes when thinking about the mind of an individual and the “mind” of a group. However, multivariate searchlight analysis revealed that several of these regions showed distinct multivoxel patterns of response to groups and individual people, suggesting that perceivers maintain distinct representations of groups and individuals during mental state inferences. These findings suggest that perceivers mentalize about groups in a manner qualitatively similar to mentalizing about individual people, but that the brain nevertheless maintains important distinctions between the representations of such entities.

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 The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Cheniaux ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Sousa Lyra
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Objective: To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.Methods: The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.Results: Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.Conclusions: Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

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