scholarly journals Situating allostasis and interoception at the core of human brain function

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuta Katsumi ◽  
Karen Quigley ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Brain Function ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Basic Functions ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
The Brain

It is now well known that brain evolution, development, and structure do not respect Western folk categories of mind – that is, the boundaries of those folk categories have never been identified in nature, despite decades of search. Categories for cognitions, emotions, perceptions, and so on, may be useful for describing the mental phenomena that constitute a human mind, but they make a poor starting point for understanding the interplay of mechanisms that create those mental events in the first place. In this paper, we integrate evolutionary, developmental, anatomical, and functional evidence and propose that predictive regulation of the body’s internal systems (allostasis) and modeling the sensory consequences of this regulation (interoception) may be basic functions of the brain that are embedded in coordinated structural and functional gradients. Our approach offers the basis for a coherent, neurobiologically-inspired research program that attempts to explain how a variety of psychological and physical phenomena may emerge from the same biological mechanisms, thus providing an opportunity to unify them under a common explanatory framework that can be used to develop shared vocabulary for theory building and knowledge accumulation.

Introduction

Mind Shift ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
John Parrington
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Past History ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Human Uniqueness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Brain

This introductory chapter begins by providing an overview of the power of the human brain, which is displayed in the wonders of modern civilization. Despite the human brain’s capacity for such intellectual and technological feats, we still know astonishingly little about how it achieves them. This deficit in understanding is a problem not only because it means we lack basic knowledge of the biological factors that underlie our human uniqueness, but also because, for all its amazing capabilities, the human mind seems particularly prone to dysfunction. Still, some would argue there is good reason to be optimistic about the prospect of developing new and better treatments for mental disorders in the not-so-distant future. Such optimism is based on the increasing potential to study how the brain works in various important new ways thanks to recent technological innovations. The chapter then considers two overly polarised views of the human mind. Ultimately, this book argues that society radically restructures the human brain within an individual person’s lifetime, and that it has also played a central role in the past history of our species, by shaping brain evolution.

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.

Mind Shift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parrington
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cellular Level ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Brain

This book draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at molecular and cellular level. It argues that this ‘shift’, enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool—language. The complex social interaction brought by language opened up the possibility of shared conceptual worlds, enriched with rhythmic sounds and images that could be drawn on cave walls. This transformation enabled modern humans to generate an exceptional human consciousness, a sense of self that arises as a product of our brain biology and the social interactions we experience. Linking early work by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to the findings of modern neuroscience, the book also explores how language, culture, and society mediate brain function, and what this view of the human mind may bring to our understanding and treatment of mental illness.

scholarly journals Attainment of parapsychological abilities through activation of brow chakra: An exploratory study

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
VIKAS K. SHARMA ◽  
PRAGYA SAHARE ◽  
MANASVI SHRIVASTAV
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Inner Core ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Extrasensory Perception ◽  
Individual Consciousness ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

It is well known that human mind possess unbounded power. It has numerous extrasensory potentials like precognition, psychokinesis, extrasensory perception etc. According to Sriram Sharma Acharya, human mind is indeed a miracle of consciousness that can visualize and traverse anywhere in the infinite expansion of the cosmos in nanoseconds. It can acquire unlimited knowledge and is endowed with super natural potentials. In this study, it is theorized that supernatural powers of the mind can be attained by activating some extrasensory centers of human body with the help of some yogic exercises such as meditation and sadhanas. According to yogic texts, Agya Chakra referred as the ‘third eye’ or the ‘sixth sense’. The yoga shastras describe the position of the Agya Chakra in the inner core of the brain deep behind the bhru-madhya (center between the two eyebrows). The view of the expert of yoga, clairvoyance, telepathy, extra-terrestrial communication etc. can be bestowed by the activation of agya chakra. The exponents of dhyan-yoga regard Agya Chakra as the core of self-realization and the centre for the linkage of individual consciousness with the omnipresent supreme-consciousness. Indian rishi-munis who, by has deep contemplation of yogic sadhanas, they had awakened the supernormal powers of their mind and become the masters of many ridhi-siddhis. In this paper, researchers have made an effort to explore the techniques that one could attain the superhuman siddhis from the dedicated yoga sadhanas through activation of agya chakra, these sages of yore had done.

The Evolution of Intelligence

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-149
Author(s):  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Feedback Mechanism ◽  
Eminent Scientist ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Size And Structure ◽  
Complex Organ

This chapter fleshes out the “cultural drive” hypothesis proposed by eminent scientist Allan Wilson. It first considers the question of exactly how social learning could drive brain evolution when some animals managed to copy with tiny brains. Greater specification of the feedback mechanism by which cultural processes fostered the evolution of cognition was required if the argument was to be compelling. Second, the chapter looks at how many variables (e.g., diet, social complexity, latitude) had been shown to be associated with brain size in primates. In order to evaluate the hypothesis that cultural processes had played a particularly central role in the evolution of the human mind, whether social learning was a genuine cause of brain evolution must first be established. Third, the chapter argues that talk of increases in “brain size” is rather simplistic. The brain is a complex organ with extensive substructure, and with particular features and circuitry known to be important to specific biological functions. How the brain had changed over evolutionary time, and whether the observed changes in size and structure were consistent with what the cultural drive hypothesis predicted, also had to be established.

scholarly journals Why the Quantum Brain?

2021 ◽  
Vol 05 (03) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Sergey B. Yurchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Broad Perspective ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Brain

This article reviews the modern approaches to the quantum brain hypothesis. The aim is to consider the hypothesis and its classical brain-machine alternative from a broad perspective, including physics, biology, computer science, cosmology, and metaphysics. My starting point is that asking whether consciousness can or cannot have free will is fundamentally incorrect. This aspect is challenged by both physics and neuroscience. The paper argues that the search for conscious free will, as it is typically tested in Libet-type experiments, implies putting the cart before the horse. From the evolutionary perspective, a more correct question is this. Might primitive neural networks of simple organisms have possessed free volitional mechanisms (quantum in origin) as an extremely valuable acquisition for the flourishing of life? Might then the mechanisms have evolved from primary (rapid and random) reflexes in the oldest brain regions such as the brainstem to give rise to conscious cortex-centered properties in later stages of the brain evolution?

1. Facts as to Brain-Work; in Illustration of the New and Old Methods of Philosophical Inquiry in Scotland

1872 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 145-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Laycock
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Medical Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mental Diseases ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
The Brain

A few words in explanation are needed. In my summer course of lectures on Medical Psychology and Mental Diseases delivered in the University, I have to investigate the human mind in its practical relations to the body, and especially I have to teach how each influences the other, so that the physician, or any intelligent person, may be able to modify these relations beneficially. The starting-point in these inquiries is the fundamental fact of experience, that no changes in the mind or the consciousness of whatever kind can or do arise, or continue, without a corresponding series of changes somewhere in the brain-tissue.

Hohlenstein-Stadel and the Evolution of Human Conceptual Thought

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Wynn ◽  
Frederick Coolidge ◽  
Martha Bright
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Parietal Lobes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Conceptual Thought ◽  
Memory Network ◽  
Ontological Categories ◽  
The Brain

Cognitive neuroscience provides a powerful perspective on the brain and cognition from which archaeologists can begin to document the evolution of the human mind. The following essay uses the Hohlenstein-Stadel figurine as a starting point to demonstrate the two kinds of conclusion open to an evolutionary cognitive archaeology: first, describing features of the cognitive life-world at specific points in human evolution, in this case central Europe 32,000 years ago, and second identifying the evolutionary timing and contexts for specific cognitive abilities, in this case various components of concept formation. We argue that the abstract concept underpinning the Hohlenstein-Stadel figurine resulted initially from an effortful (attentive) linking of ‘animal’ and ‘person’ concepts via the working memory network of the frontal and parietal lobes. These ‘animal’ and ‘person’ concepts themselves were largely unconscious folk biological categories generated by a parietal network that had evolved earlier, probably by the time of the earliest Homo sapiens. These in turn rest on even older, basic ontological categories of ‘animate’ and ‘manipulable’ objects that are temporal lobe networks, and which evolved much earlier still, perhaps with the advent of Homo erectus.

scholarly journals Integration of Circadian Clock Information in the Drosophila Circadian Neuronal Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 074873042199395
Author(s):  
Myra Ahmad ◽  
Wanhe Li ◽  
Deniz Top
Keyword(s):  
Neuronal Network ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Circadian Clocks ◽  
Neuronal Circuit ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rhythmic Behavior ◽  
Core Components ◽  
The Brain

Circadian clocks are biochemical time-keeping machines that synchronize animal behavior and physiology with planetary rhythms. In Drosophila, the core components of the clock comprise a transcription/translation feedback loop and are expressed in seven neuronal clusters in the brain. Although it is increasingly evident that the clocks in each of the neuronal clusters are regulated differently, how these clocks communicate with each other across the circadian neuronal network is less clear. Here, we review the latest evidence that describes the physical connectivity of the circadian neuronal network . Using small ventral lateral neurons as a starting point, we summarize how one clock may communicate with another, highlighting the signaling pathways that are both upstream and downstream of these clocks. We propose that additional efforts are required to understand how temporal information generated in each circadian neuron is integrated across a neuronal circuit to regulate rhythmic behavior.

The Core of What the Brain Does

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (44) ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Kreiner
Keyword(s):  
The Core ◽  
The Brain
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