The Mind and the Brain (48 page)

Human beings are only partially understandable when viewed as the product of material processes. Human beings think, make judgments, and exert effort on the basis of those judgments and in so doing change the material aspects of both their inner and outer worlds in ways that defy the narrow categories of materialist modes of analysis. Understanding our capacity to systematically alter our own neurobiology requires welcoming such concepts as choice and effort into the vocabulary of science. In this new century, questions about the mind-brain interface will become increasingly important as we try to understand how humans function in fields ranging from medicine to economics and political science. Knowing that the mind can, through knowledge and effort, reshape neurobiological processes must powerfully inform that effort.

It is the perspective of what we might call biological humanism, not biological materialism, that fits with the findings of neuroplasticity. It’s a mental striving, not a deterministic physical process, that best describes the clinical data on directed neuroplasticity. This may seem to be wishful, even reckless, thinking; after all, to pronounce oneself a skeptic on the subject of biological determinism is to court ridicule, to risk being tarred with the brush of “nonscientific thinking” or even “New Age nonsense.” But it seems to me that what we have learned about neuroplasticity and, especially,
self-directed neuroplasticity—even this early in our understanding—is that our physical brain alone does not shape our destiny. How can it, when the experiences we undergo, the choices we make, and the acts we undertake inscribe a diary on the living matter of our cortex? The brain continually refines its processing capacities to meet the challenges we present it, increasing the communicative power of neurons and circuits that respond to oft-received inputs or that are tapped for habitual outputs. It is the brain’s astonishing power to learn and unlearn, to adapt and change, to carry with it the inscriptions of our experiences, that allows us to throw off the shackles of biological materialism, for it is the life we lead that creates the brain we have. Our new understanding of the power of mind to shape brain can advance not only our knowledge, but also our wisdom. Radical attempts to view the world as a merely material domain, devoid of mind as an active force, neglect the very powers that define humankind. The reality of the mind-shaped brain encourages a cultural climate in which scientific research not only yields advancements in our knowledge, but also adds to our wisdom as an evolving species. By harnessing the power of Directed Mental Force we may yet live up to our taxonomic designation and truly become deserving of the name
Homo sapiens.

I began, in Chapter 1, with an exploration of the dilemma posed by the notion of a mind’s arising from matter, and with Descartes’s separation of nature into the material and the mental. Cartesian dualism served science well, at first: by ceding matters of the spirit to men of the cloth, it got the Church off the back of science, which for centuries afterward was perceived as less of a threat to religion’s domain than it would otherwise have been (
pace
, Galileo). But Cartesian dualism was a disaster for moral philosophy, setting in motion a process that ultimately reduced human beings to automatons. If all our actions, past and present, can be completely understood as the passive results of machinelike physical mechanisms, without acknowledgment of the existence of consciousness,
much less will, then moral responsibility becomes meaningless. If our conscious thoughts matter nothing to the choices we make, and the behavior we engage in, then it is difficult to see how we are any more responsible for our actions than a robot is. That’s why the question of whether the mind is capable of real activity (and thus capable of generating a physically effective mental force) is, at its core, an ethical one. “I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad,” James wrote in
The Dilemma of Determinism
. The notion that the mind and the attention it focuses are merely passive effects of material causes, he wrote, “violates my sense of moral reality through and through.”

But this conflict between science and moral philosophy vanishes like fog in the light of dawn if, instead of continuing to apply to minds and brains a theory of matter and reality that has been superseded—that is, classical physics—we adopt the most accurate theory of the world advanced so far: quantum theory. In quantum theory, matter and consciousness do not stare at each other across an unbridgeable divide. Rather, they are connected by well-defined and exhaustively tested mathematical rules. “Quantum theory,” says Henry Stapp, “rehabilitates the basic premise of moral philosophy. It entails that certain actions that a person can take are influenced by his stream of consciousness, which is not strictly controlled by any known law of nature.” A quantum theory of mind, incorporating the discoveries of nonlocality and the Quantum Zeno Effect, offers the hope of mending the breach between science and moral philosophy. It states definitively that real, active, causally efficacious mind operates in the material world.

The shift in understanding inspired by neuroplasticity and the power of mind to shape brain undermines the claim of materialist determinism that humans are essentially nothing more than fleshy computers spitting out the behavioral results of some inescapable neurogenetic program. “The brain is going to do what the brain was always going to do,” say the materialists. Both modern physics
and contemporary neuroscience reply that they are wrong. The teachings of faith have long railed against the perils of the materialist mind-set. Now neuroscience and physics have joined them at the barricades. The science emerging with the new century tells us that we are not the children of matter alone, nor its slaves. As we establish ourselves in the third millennium, the Law of Karma elaborated so eloquently by Gotama five hundred years before the first millennium still resonates: “All Beings are owners of their Karma. Whatever volitional actions they do, good or evil, of those they shall become the heir.”

from a psychological-epistemological point of view
: Wigner, E. 1967.
Symmetries and reflections
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 202.

I
NTRODUCTION

1913 classic
: Watson, J. B. 1913. Psychology as the behaviorist views it.
Psychological Review, 20
, pp. 158–177.

exposure and response prevention
: Baer, L., & Minichello, W. E. 1998. Behavioral treatment for OCD. In: Jenike, M. A., Baer, L., & Minichiello, W. E. (Eds.) 1998.
Obsessive-compulsive disorders: Practical management
, 3rd ed. St. Louis: Mosby.

scientism
: Barzun, J. 2000.
From dawn to decadence: 500 years of Western cultural life
. New York: HarperCollins, p. 218.

Bare Attention:
Nyanaponika Thera. 1973.
The heart of Buddhist meditation
. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, p. 30.

impartial and well-informed spectator
: Smith, A. 1976. Raphael, D. D., & Macfie, A. L., (Eds.)
The theory of moral sentiments
. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 112–113.

“
the essential achievement of the will
”: James, W. 1983.
The principles of psychology
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, p. 1166. “
prolong the stay in consciousness
”: Ibid., p. 429.

“
the utmost a believer in free-will can ever do
”: Ibid., p. 1177.

“
choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds
”: Merzenich, M. M., & deCharms, R. 1996. Neural representations, experience, and change. In: Llinás, R., & Churchland, P. S. (Eds.)
The mind-brain continuum: Sensory processes
. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 62–81.

“
user illusion
”: Dennett, D. 1994. In: Guttenplan, S.
A companion to the philosophy of mind
. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, pp. 236–243.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

Alcmaeon of Croton:
Burnet, J. 1920.
Early Greek philosophy
, 3rd ed. London: A. & C. Black.

“the brain has the most power for man”:
Hippocrates, On the sacred disease. Translation from Kirk, G. S., & Raven, J. E. 1963.
The pre-socratic philosophers: A critical history with a selection of texts.

New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 442.

stimulated tiny spots on the surface:
Penfield, W., & Perot, P. 1963. The brain’s record of auditory and visual experience.
Brain, 86
, pp. 595–697.

“The word Mind is obsolete”:
Bogen, J. E. 1998. My developing understanding of Roger Wolcott Sperry’s philosophy.
Neuropsychologia, 36
(10), pp. 1089–1096.

“understand the brain”
: Nichols, M.J. & Newsome, W.T. 1999. The neurobiology of cognition.
Nature, 402
, p. C35–38.

“the fundamental features of [the physical] world are as described by physics”
: Searle, J. R. 2000. A philosopher unriddles the puzzle of consciousness.
Cerebrum
, 2, pp. 44–54.

explanatory gap:
Levine, J. 1983. Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap.
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 6
, pp. 354–361.
Imagine a color-blind neuroscientist:
Jackson, J. 1982. Epiphenomenal qualia.
Philosophical Quarterly
, 3, pp. 127–136.

“The problem with materialism”
: McGinn, C. 1999.
The mysterious flame: Conscious minds in a material world
. New York: Basic Books, p. 28.

“That one body may act upon another”: The Correspondence of Isaac Newton. Volume III, 1688–1694
. Edited by H. W. Turnbull, F.R.S. Cambridge: Published for the Royal Society at the University Press, 1961. Letter 406 Newton to Bentley, 25 February 1692/3.

one version of quantum theory:
Von Neumann, J. 1932.
Mathema-tische Grundlagen der Quanten Mechanik
. English translation from Beyer, R.T. 1953.
Mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Descartes and La Mettrie:
see the discussion of their work in: Reck, A. J. 1972.
Speculative philosophy: A study of its nature, types, and uses
. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

As Colin McGinn puts it:
McGinn, 1999, pp. 18–19.

Steven Rose:
Rose, S. 1998. Brains, mind and the world. In: Rose, S. (Ed.)
From brains to consciousness: Essays on the new sciences of the mind
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p. 12.

“That our being should consist of two fundamental elements”:
Sherrington, C. S. 1947.
The integrative action of the nervous system,
2d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, p. xxiv.

In 1986 Eccles proposed
: Eccles, J. C. 1986. Do mental events cause neural events analogously to the probability fields of quantum mechanics?
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 227
, pp. 411–428.

Among the warring theories
: Edelman, G. M., & Tononi, G. A. 2000.
Universe of consciousness: How matter becomes imagination
. New York: Basic Books, p. 6.

“Mentalistic Materialism” as the neurosurgeon Joe Bogen has termed it
: Bogen, 1998.

“Mental processes are just brain processes
”: Flanagan, O. 1992.
Consciousness reconsidered
. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, p. xi.
Churchland and Daniel Dennett
: Churchland, P. M., & Churchland, P. S. 1998.
On the contrary: Critical essays, 1987–1997
. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Dennett, D. C. 1991.
Consciousness explained
. Boston: Little, Brown.

“mind does not move matter”
: Herrick, C. J. 1956.
The evolution of human nature.
Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, p. 281.

the causal efficacy of mind
: James, W. 1983. The automaton theory. In:
The principles of psychology
. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, Chap. 5.

called such traits
spandrels: Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist
programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 205
, pp. 581–598.

Emergent materialism
: Sperry, R. W. 1992. Turnabout on consciousness: A mentalist view.
Journal of Mind and Behavior, 13,
pp. 259–280.

As he put it in 1970
: Sperry, R. W. 1970. Perception in the absence of the neocortical commissures.
Research Publications Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, 48,
pp. 123–138.

Agnostic physicalism
: Bogen, 1998.

Process philosophy
: for a useful overview see Reck, A. J. 1972. A useful book on Whitehead’s profoundly abstract philosophical system is Sherburn, D. W. (Ed.) 1981.
A key to Whitehead’s process and reality
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dualistic interactionism
: Popper, K. R., & Eccles J. C. 1977.
The self
and its brain: An argument for interactionism
. New York: Springer International.

the Australian philosopher David Chalmers
: Chalmers, D.J. 1996.
The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory
. New York: Oxford University Press.

“
started out life as a materialist
”: Kuhn, R. L. 2000.
Closer to the truth
. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 21.

“
To truly bridge the gap
”: Ibid.

“When I first got interested in”:
Searle, 2000.

Crick:
Crick, F. J. 1994.
The astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul.
New York: Scribner’s.

Edelman:
Edelman & Tononi, 2000.

“reductionistic neurobiological explanations”:
Singer, W. 1998. Consciousness from a neurobiological perspective. In: Rose (Ed.) 1998, p. 229.

“ambiguous relationship to mind”:
Rose, 1998.

“mind is but the babbling of a robot”
: Doty, R. W. 1998. The five mysteries of the mind, and their consequences.
Neuropsychologia, 36
, pp. 1069–1076.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
: Two standard general reference books for information on OCD are: Jenike, M. A., Baer, L., & Minichiello, W. E. (Eds.) 1998.
Obsessive-compulsive disorders: Practical management
, 3rd ed. St. Louis: Mosby; Koran, L. M. 1999.
Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in adults: A comprehensive clinical guide
. New York: Cambridge University Press.

exposure and response prevention:
Foa, E. B., & Wilson, R. 2001.
Stop obsessing! How to overcome your obsessions and compulsions
, rev. ed. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell; Meyer V., Levy, R., & Schnurer, A. 1974. The behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorders In: Beech, H. R. (Ed.)
Obsessional states
. London: Methuen, pp. 233–256.

some 25 percent of patients:
Baer, L., & Minichello, W. E. 1998. Behavioral treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. In: Jenike, Baer, & Minichiello, 1998, pp. 337–367.

Cognitive therapy—a form of structured introspection—was already
widely used
: Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. 1979.
Cognitive therapy of depression
. New York: Guilford Press.

we had studied depression
: Baxter, L. R., Jr., Phelps, M. E., Mazziotta, J. C., Schwartz, J. M., et al. 1985. Cerebral metabolic rates for glucose in mood disorders: Studies with positron emission tomography and fluorodeoxyglucose F 18.
Archives of General Psychiatry
, 42, pp. 441–447.

analysis of the PET scans
: Baxter, L. R., Jr., Schwartz, J. M., Mazziotta, J. C., et al. 1988. Cerebral glucose metabolic rates in nonde-pressed patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
American Journal of Psychiatry, 145
, pp. 1560–1563; Baxter, L. R., Jr., Phelps, M.E., Mazziotta, J. C., Guze, B. H., Schwartz, J. M., & Selin, C. E. 1987. Local cerebral glucose metabolic rates in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A comparison with rates in unipolar depression and in normal controls.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 44
, pp. 211–218.

anterior cingulate gyrus
: Swedo, S. E., Schapiro, M. B., Grady, C. L., et al. 1989. Cerebral glucose metabolism in childhood-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 46
, pp. 518–523.

elevated metabolism in the orbital frontal cortex
: Rauch, S. L., & Baxter, L. R. 1998. Neuroimaging in obsessive-compulsive disorder and related disorders. In: Jenike, Baer, & Minichiello, 1998, pp. 289–317.

behavioral physiologist E. T. Rolls at Oxford:
Thorpe, S. J., Rolls, E.T., & Maddison, S. 1983. The orbitofrontal cortex: Neuronal activity in the behaving monkey.
Experimental Brain Research, 4
, pp. 93–115.

The orbital frontal cortex, it seems, functions as an error detector:
reviews of recent work on this subject are in: Rolls, E.T. 2000. The orbitofrontal cortex and reward.
Cerebral Cortex, 10
, pp. 284–294; O’Doherty, J., Kringelbach, M. L., Rolls, E.T., et al. 2001. Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex.
Nature Neuroscience, 4
, pp. 95–102; Rogers, R. D., Owen, A.M., Middleton, H. C., et al. 1999. Choosing between small, likely rewards and large, unlikely rewards activates inferior and orbital prefrontal cortex.
Journal of Neuroscience, 15
, pp. 9029–9038.

volunteers play a sort of gambling game:
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. 1997. Deciding advantageously before
knowing the advantageous strategy.
Science, 275
, pp. 1293–1295. Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. R., & Lee, G.P. 1999. Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to decision-making.
Journal of Neuroscience, 19
, pp. 5473–5481.

traffic pattern connecting the striatum and the cortex:
For accessible reviews of this see: Schwartz, J. M., 1998. Neuroanatomical aspects of cognitive-behavioral therapy response in obsessive-compulsive disorder: An evolving perspective on brain and behavior.
British Journal of Psychiatry, 173, Supplement 35
, pp. 39–45; Schwartz, J. M. 1997. Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Science & Medicine, 4(2)
, pp. 14–23.

are called
matrisomes: Eblen, F., & Graybiel, A. M. 1995. Highly restricted origin of prefrontal cortical inputs to striosomes in the macaque monkey.
Journal of Neuroscience, 15
, pp. 5999–6013.

neuronal mosaic of reason and passion
: Graybiel, A. M., & Rauch, S. L. 2000. Toward a neurobiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Neuron, 28
, pp. 343–347; Graybiel, A. M. & Canales, J. J. 2001. The neurobiology of repetitive behaviors: Clues to the neurobiology of Tourette syndrome.
Advances in Neurology, 85
, pp. 123–131.

tonically active neurons
(TANs) : Aosaki, T., Kimura, M., & Graybiel, A.M. 1995. Temporal and spatial characteristics of tonically active neurons of the primate’s striatum.
Journal of Neurophysiology
, 73, pp. 1234–1252.

serve as a sort of gating mechanism, redirecting information flow
: Graybiel, A. M. 1998. The basal ganglia and chunking of action repertoires.
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 70
, pp. 119–136.
role in the development of habits
: Jog, M. S., Kubota, Y., Connolly, C. I., Hillegaart, V., & Graybiel, A. M. 1999. Building neural representations of habits.
Science, 26
, pp. 1745–1749.