Universe is made up of matter. What is matter is for physicists to discuss. We know that our body is composed of matter. Body is made up of cells, which group together to form tissues. Collection of tissues with related functions form an organ (e.g. liver, brain etc). Organs with functional interrelations form an organ system (e.g. gastro intestinal system, cardiac and vascular - haert and blood vessls, nervous system etc).
A living organism is the totality of functions of all these. We breathe, eat, and do various activities with our body.
But where is the mind ? Has it got a specific location in the body ? Is it spread out all over the body ? Or is it within the heart ?
Well, it will take some time to go into this in detail. The current scientific evidence conclusively shows that the MIND is the totality of the brain's functions.
I can see at least a few hands going up after reading the last sentence. It is a bit difficult to believe this. But it is true. Look at the following
1) Children suffering from mental subnormality (mental retardation or learning disability- in the UK) have smaller brains. their brains weigh aroung 200 grams lesser than the normal.
2) A blow on the head can lead to immediate loss of consciousness, whereas if you are punched in the chest or abdomen, this does not happen.
3) Alcohol or other drugs with capacity to alter our MIND do so because they are able to reach the brain. If these drugs cannot act on the brain they lose this ability.
4) When we fall asleep, it is only our brains that are sleeping, Other organs like our heart, kidneys, liver, stomach etc continue to fuction, though they may slow down a bit. It is only the brain that needs this period of enforced rest. Brain cannot work without taking a break (like most of us), but our heart can beat from the time of birth to our last breath without stopping. When we sleep our active mind also disappears, this is because our brain is resting. But some parts of the brain works, though in a slightly different fashion.
In nutshell MIND IS MATTER, THE MIND IS AN OUTPUT OF MATTER.
More on this later.
ഇന്ത്യ
2 weeks ago
2 comments:
Hi,
A simple analogy that educated people can understand will be with hardware and software in a computer.....brain being the hardware and mind the software.
Shibu.
Shibu's analogy is very apt. We can use the computer as an anlogy to understand the working of the brain - that is the mind brain interface. Yesterday we had organized a workshop for journalists at Calicut Press club. My topic was Mind and Brain. I actually used this anology there. When we use a word processing tool and type in Engish or some other language, the CPU of the computer does not understand this language. At the level of the machine language it is a string of bit of 0 and 1. Further down it is an electrical signal. Similarly we have feelings, thoughts etc at the level of individual, but at the level of the brain all this is representd as a set of electrical and chemical processes. This may be an oversimplfication, but is useful to understand. The neuroscientist Eric Kandel (who si also a psychiatrist)was awarded Nobel Prize for showing that learning can cause change in the structure of the nerve cells and their connections.
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