Mind-Brain Connection

Just think a general discussion of the connection between the brain and mind, or subjective experiences of consciousness, would be interesting. Some maintain that consciousness purely IS the physical and chemical processes in the brain. This is the theory underlying mainstream psychiatry today. It's saying, the mental state IS the chemical levels. Therefore to fix 'problems' in an individual's mental state, you correct the chemical imbalance.

But what if the mind isn't just the brain? What if neuro-chemical changes in the brain are a response to the fluctuations of the mind, rather than the cause? The mind could somehow exist in an immaterial, non-physical, fashion, and the brain is sort of a physical beacon for it, where the brain is just acting in a way that corresponds to the mind. Now this can potentially enter into the realm of 'spirituality,' including ideas of reincarnation, or rebirth. If the mind is non-physical by nature, you can see how it could be 'hosted' by another brain, and this would be the cycle of rebirth.

One more thing about the psychiatric aspect I mentioned earlier. If it is true that the brain responds to the mind, rather than the mind being a product of the chemical levels in the brain, then you can see how psychiatric medication could be potentially harmful. If the brain is responding to the mind, it means that the chemical reactions taking place are necessary reactions to keep the brain balanced with the mind. It's like the brain expresses the mind. The mind is trying to express something through the brain, but the psychiatric medication doesn't allow the brain to send that chemical message. You can see how this could cause problems, could potentially try to express in a more extreme manner, for example. This would explain people taking anti-depressants and then killing themselves, and such things.

Yes in fact the mind can change the brain. I would recommend reading 'Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain' as it examines pure science with 'spiritualism' particularly Buddhism. Any kind of psychiatric problems can be overcome without the use of medications but the catch is you actually need to know that it can be done - not just try to convince yourself it is possible. Of course those with significant psychiatric problems cannot simply wake up one day and understand this.

I have long understood the possibilities of the mind over the brain but only recently have I been reading about additional capabilities of the mind that most one would consider 'hocus pocus'. There seems to be many ancient cultures across the globe that knew of 'supernormal' capabilities but without understanding the 'how' they had no choice but to resort to making up concepts that seemed to fit. As I see things now, the mind is central to everything. Without consciousness there is no reality.

Here are 2 more great reads in regards to this topic...The Open Focus Brain
& Resolving Pain both by Dr Les Fehmi PhD. You are taught exercises that retrain
your brain so it functions properly without medication. The Open Focus Brain
helps with anxiety, panic, depression, ADHA & many other problems.

What fascinated me was in the beginning you focused on "space". Yes just simply
space & how you can actually feel space all around you & around each finger & etc.
I was surprised how it actually made a huge difference in anxiety.

The effect is so strong if practiced that he has worked with professional athletes,
musicians & all kinds of people. So you really can retrain you brain to being focused.

Cheers
Ektar

reply to post by TheJourney

But what if the mind isn't just the brain? What if neuro-chemical changes in the brain are a response to the fluctuations of the mind, rather than the cause?

To say the mind is the brain is to say a brain can think, but hold a brain in a jar it would be difficult to infer that that brain is thinking. The mind requires the entire body, and the mind/body are one and the same.

Neuro-chemical changes in the brain are a response to fluctuations of the body.

The brain is one factor within a very precise and defined confluence that brings the emergent system that we call "the mind" into physical existence. Other factors are circumstance, stimuli, precedent, the 'memory cloud' of residual fact sets that represent previous perception sets produced by that brain, and (most critically) the ongoing and active influence of the mind itself as it has developed to that instant of its own progressive emergence. The mind is produced by the brain, but since it is both sentient and sapient, it gets deeply involved in its own progressive development. This is due to the physical nature of the human mind, and how physical reality is actually formatted.

The short answer is that information affects the dynamic nature of the material realm, as the material realm brings information into physical existence. What a brain produces is (essentially) a hybrid that possesses physical qualities of both the event-centric material and the event-produced informational. What the human brain produces is a proactive/reactive hybrid that has full awareness of itself as a physical manifestation that exists within an ongoing timeline that features a "now and then", and this is what makes this hybrid "human", as opposed to the hybrid manifestations that are always "in the Now" and incapable of planning or ruminating on the past.

Planning and ruminating (a much deeper level of learning from the past) was a definite advantage for the "human" brain/body survival system, but this survival advantage did come with a profound set of long range ramifications. Let's just say that it wasn't a long walk from "what awaits me?" to "what exists as real?" to "what am I?", even when survival was at stake. When survival wasn't the immediate concern, the questions came fast and furious for those capable of placing themselves within a larger existential context. Inevitably, these emerging minds began caring about their ongoing development once they realized the fact that even though their brains brought them into physical existence, those brains were not what they were. That they could observe their brains' activities as detached observers.

It's this capacity for self abstraction and self placement within a progressing change/event trajectory that separates the human mind from all other material brain generations. Yes, this means that there are other forms of 'human being', perhaps even on this planet, since the human being is the dynamic, sentient and sapient informational hybrid that is produced by a brain capable of producing such a thing. Our material brain is a Homo Sapiens hominid brain. It produces our own unique version of human being while it persists as a functional system, and when it dies, our own version of human being is set free into the eternal informational realm as a brand new fully viable resident of that realm.

Basically, the human mind (which is what the human being is) is an emergent system that is unique among other emergent systems in that (1) its ongoing existence isn't dependent on an ongoing confluence of balanced factors (since information is permanent once it has physically emerged) and (2) it pitches in and works to actively affect its own development while the brain is still alive and "generating" additional "burst sets" to add to its gathering mass.

Of course, if the brain is damaged, then the emerging mind is also affected. Being human is the best and worst thing that can happen to anything that exists as physical. The possibilities are wondrous, even as the threats are nightmarish. Basically, we're each epitome expressions of progressive development, and we can only do what we can to develop the best possible version of ourselves with the limited time we've each got with our own brain as the self generating "gestational placenta" that we use it as. That, and hope for the best when it comes to circumstances and the sheer dynamics of this material realm.

That said, it's probably a good thing that when all is said and done, we're each a contextual mixture of every moment of our brain's entire life span of generating the intellect burst sets that have gathered to create and define us. As a dynamic collective, we've each got a much better shot at full range functionality and overall balance.