An evaluation of the xenobotic cognitive project: Towards Stage 1 of xenobotic cognition

Xenobot, the world's first biological robot, puts numerous philosophical riddles before us. One among them pertains to the cognitive status of these entities. Are these biological robots cognitive? To evaluate the cognitive status of xenobots and to resolve the puzzle of a single mind emerging from smaller sub-units, in this article, I juxtapose the cognitive capacities of xenobots with that of two other minimal models of cognition, i.e., basal cognition and nonliving active matter cognition. Further, the article underlines the essential cognitive capabilities that xenobots need to achieve to enter what I call stage 1 of xenobotic cognition. Stage 1 is characterized by numerous cognitive mechanisms, which are integral for the survival and cognition of basal organisms. Finally, I suggest that developing xenobots that can reach Stage 1 can help us achieve sophistication in the areas of evolution of the human mind, robotics, biology and medicine, and artificial intelligence (AI).

What is (and was) a person? Evidence on historical mind perceptions from natural language

An important philosophical tradition identifies persons as those entities that have minds, such that mind perception is a window into person perception. Psychological research has found that human perceptions of mind consist of at least two distinct dimensions: agency (e.g. planning, deciding) and experience (e.g. feeling, hungering). Taking this insight into the semantic space of natural language, we develop a generalizable, scalable computational-linguistics method for measuring variation in perceived agency and experience in large archives of plain-text documents. The resulting text-based rankings of entities along these dimensions correspond to human judgments of perceived agency and experience assessed in blind surveys. We then map both dimensions of mind in historical English-language corpora over the last 200 years and identify two salient trends. First, we find that while women are now described as having similar levels of agency as men, they are still described as more experience-oriented. Second, we find that domesticated animals have gained higher attributions of experience (but not agency) relative to wild animals, especially since the rise of the global animal rights movement in the 1980s.

The Perspective of Psychological Action Mechanism of Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness Meditation Blurs the Transparent Boundary Between the Unconscious and the Conscious Mind

Based on the author's clinical experience, the aim of this paper is to conceptually analyse the theory of psychological functioning and action mechanisms in the way mindfulness meditation works. Meditation is a method of revealing unconsciousness. It works in a similar way to the inhibitory and excitatory mechanisms of neurones. Block pathogenic thoughts and emotions that reach the unconscious to the conscious mind. The long-term implementation of mediation may be more effective than the short-term and interrupted implementation.

Introduction: On brain and crime

Crime is a complex phenomenon involving many factors, among which are situational and societal factors. What counts as a crime may also vary across space and time. Often, it is the interplay of several factors that may lead to criminal behavior. Scientifically, brain function is important to consider, first of all because the brain is central to behavior as such, including criminal behavior. Second, because there is increasing evidence for the relevance of specific brain dysfunctions in some criminal behavior, particularly developmental findings related to nonadaptive behavior. Many of our behavioral tendencies are rooted in our childhood (experiences), and this, it appears, is also, at least to some extent, true for nonadaptive behavior. This chapter considers several overarching issues regarding the relationship between-and the science of-brain and crime, some from a conceptual, some from a legal, and others from a developmental perspective.

The language marker hypothesis

According to the language marker hypothesis language has provided homo sapiens with a rich symbolic system that plays a central role in interpreting signals delivered by our sensory apparatus, in shaping action goals, and in creating a powerful tool for reasoning and inferencing. This view provides an important correction on embodied accounts of language that reduce language to action, perception, emotion and mental simulation. The presence of a language system has, however, also important consequences for perception, action, emotion, and memory. Language stamps signals from perception, action, and emotional systems with rich cognitive markers that transform the role of these signals in the overall cognitive architecture of the human mind. This view does not deny that language is implemented by means of universal principles of neural organization. However, language creates the possibility to generate rich internal models of the world that are shaped and made accessible by the characteristics of a language system. This makes us less dependent on direct action-perception couplings and might even sometimes go at the expense of the veridicality of perception. In cognitive (neuro)science the pendulum has swung from language as the key to understand the organization of the human mind to the perspective that it is a byproduct of perception and action. It is time that it partly swings back again.

Reflections on extraordinary knowing: Insight into the nature of the mind

Scientists have spent considerable time and effort studying and mapping the geography of the brain, with the expectation that this understanding will lead to insights related to the nature of the mind. This article discusses evidence that, while the mind utilizes sensory information processed by the brain, awareness is not limited to these structures. Research studies give evidence supporting the mind's ability to expand awareness to include perception of objects and events not available to the five senses. This awareness also extends to moments in the future, including the mind's ability to access information seconds or even days in advance of the occurrence. A major brain filter that limits this capacity for expanded awareness is the Default Mode Network (DMN). We summarize research showing that when the DMN activity is reduced, e.g., through meditation, ingestion of neuromodulatory drugs, or NDEs, filtering within the brain is reduced, there is a concomitant development of new connectivity, and these neural changes are correlated with access to expanded awareness.

Recentering neuroscience on behavior: The interface between brain and environment is a privileged level of control of neural activity

Despite the huge and constant progress in the molecular and cellular neuroscience fields, our capability to understand brain alterations and treat mental illness is still limited. Therefore, a paradigm shift able to overcome such limitation is warranted. Behavior and the associated mental states are the interface between the central nervous system and the living environment. Since, in any system, the interface is a key regulator of system organization, behavior is proposed here as a unique and privileged level of control and orchestration of brain structure and activity. This view has relevant scientific and clinical implications. First, the study of behavior represents a singular starting point for the investigation of neural activity in an integrated and comprehensive fashion. Second, behavioral changes, accomplished through psychotherapy or environmental interventions, are expected to have the highest impact to specifically reorganize the complexity of the human mind and thus achieve a solid and long-lasting improvement in mental health.

Contested Minds Across Time: Perspectives from Chinese History and Culture

This essay provides an overview of the contributions by Emily Baum, Chengyang Jiang, and Sandra Teresa Hyde. Chinese history and culture provide a useful resource for thinking beyond the limits of the contemporary human sciences, such as the way that the mind operates as a contested object of knowledge across time, place, and disciplines.

Editors' Introduction to Networks of the Mind: How Can Network Science Elucidate Our Understanding of Cognition?

Thinking is complex. Over the years, several types of methods and paradigms have developed across the psychological, cognitive, and neural sciences to study such complexity. A rapidly growing multidisciplinary quantitative field of network science offers quantitative methods to represent complex systems as networks, or graphs, and study the network properties of these systems. While the application of network science to study the brain has greatly advanced our understanding of the brains structure and function, the application of these tools to study cognition has been done to a much lesser account. This topic is a collection of papers that discuss the fruitfulness of applying network science to study cognition across a wide scope of research areas from generalist accounts of memory and encoding, to individual differences, to communities, and finally to cultural and individual change.

How does the 'environment' come to the person? The 'ecology of the person' and addiction

Currently, psychiatry lacks a field that can be called "theoretical psychiatry", which uses theoretical concepts and explanatory models: The main stream of research is to collect data of all kinds in the hope that the computational Big Data approach will shed a bright light on the black box of mental disorders. Accordingly, the biology-based Research Domain Criteria of the National Institute of Mental Health have been established. However, as philosophical analyses of concepts and methods have shown, several epistemological gaps stand in the way of a consistent multilevel understanding of mental disorders. Also, the implicit ontological problems in the biological reduction of the psychosocial level and in the integration of so-called hard and soft disciplines are mostly left out. As a consequence, a non-reductive psychological theory of mental disorders is sought that also integrates correlating biological and sociological issues. In this context, one example of promising nonreductive psychiatric research is the option of systems/network psychopathology. The possibilities for integrating different psychological perspectives are highlighted for the field of addiction research and treatment, where pragmatic behaviorist approaches dominate over the theory-based practice of psychoanalysis. In comparing the theoretical constructs of these two approaches, the relevance of the concept of "(social) environment" as the wealth of influential sociocultural factors is discussed at levels superior to the interpersonal micro-level, namely the organizational meso- and societal macro level, which is not sufficiently considered in current biopsychiatry. On this basis of argumentation, the usefulness of grounding and framing psychiatry through the field of ecological sciences, especially human ecology, is demonstrated. Finally, to this end, an outline of an ecological model of mental health and illness is presented.

Framework for internal sensation of pleasure using constraints from disparate findings in nucleus accumbens

It is necessary to find a mechanism that generates first-person inner sensation of pleasure to understand what causes addiction and associated behaviour by drugs of abuse. The actual mechanism is expected to explain several disparate findings in nucleus accumbens (NAc), a brain region associated with pleasure, in an interconnected manner. Previously, it was possible to derive a mechanism for natural learning and explain: (1) Generation of inner sensation of memory using changes generated by learning; and (2) Long-term potentiation as an experimental delayed scaled-up change by the same mechanism that occur during natural learning. By extending these findings and by using disparate third person observations in NAc from several studies, present work provides a framework of a mechanism that generates internal sensation of pleasure that can provide interconnected explanations for: (1) Ability to induce robust long-term depression (LTD) in NAc from naïve animals; (2) Impaired ability to induce LTD in “addicted” state; (3) Attenuation of postsynaptic potentials by cocaine; and (4) Reduced firing of medium spiny neurons in response to cocaine or dopamine. Findings made by this work are testable.

The Game of Science and Puzzles of Paradigm

Zagaria, Andó́ and Zennaro (in this issue) have offered that the discipline of psychology is fraught with conceptual chaos and a multiplicity of constructs. They have also assessed psychology to be a soft science, with much potential to be a hard science, should it allow itself to be unified by the principles offered by evolutionary psychology. With this approach, psychology would transition from its pre-paradigmatic to a paradigmatic status. In this commentary, we question their premise, method and conclusion, and finally submit that the preoccupation with paradigm is connected with a positivist view of scientific knowledge production. Psychological constructs are not ostensive in nature and cannot be treated as matter is in the hard sciences. This is neither possible, nor desirable. Additionally, such constructs are located in various theoretical perspectives, necessary to understand their multifaceted nature. We question the proposal of evolutionary psychology as an alternative meta-theory. Psychology is essentially a human endeavor, and we must step out of our need to follow the acultural Euro-American vision of positivist science, and instead build an enterprise that can be plural, contextually sensitive and incorporate the complexity and interdisciplinarity needed to be truly successful at approaching the human condition.

A Call for Conscious Changes to Counter COVID-19

This article lays out the contours of a novel approach to social change and interactions, based on the organic interplay of individuals, institutions, countries and the global society. This approach is based on the POZE paradigm, which posits that change starts inside and is nurtured from the outside in - both for individuals and for durable social change. Such a holistic perspective is crucial to build society as it emerges from the Pandemic. COVID-19 is a reminder that humans around the World are fundamentally all the same; the result of 4 dimensions - soul, heart, mind and body, which find their expression in  aspirations, emotions, thoughts and sensations. These 4 dimensions constantly interact and influence each other in ways that reflect the 4-dimensional dynamic that shapes our collective existence. Individuals are the micro dimension that stands at the center of everything else. Forming part of various institutions, from families to parties, individuals are constitutive components of the meso dimension. Individuals and institutions form countries and economies, the macro-dimension. These dimensions in addition to nature and supra-national institutions form the meta-dimension. A constant interplay connects and determines what happens in each dimension and what derives from it. To thrive in the post-pandemic world, we must understand and optimize this interplay. This is the point of departure for the argumentation laid out in this article. The prevailing systemic imbalance in which many lack the means to cover their basic needs can only be addressed by planting the C-Core (completion, compassion, creativity, cooperation) at the center of human interactions. When we bring risks, responsibility and real opportunities together in one coherent framework whilst applying the proposed twice 4-dimensional paradigm-shift a set of concrete recommendations appears. Looking at individuals, and institutions, the article concludes with suggestions to seize this moment and shape not merely a response to the crises, but to lay the ground for a new social contract. In the past the C in C-Suite stood for Chief, the upper part of the leadership ladder in an institution. In the future that C must represent C-Core qualities.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42413-021-00110-0.

Imagination in General Psychology: Thinking with Luca Tateo's "A Theory of Imagining, Knowing, and Understanding"

How should we understand imagination within the broader framework of general psychology? Turning to Luca Tateo's (2020) recent book, A theory of imagining, knowing, and understanding, I begin with asking what imagination is. The question leads to seeing the interplay between imagination, perception, and conceptual organization. Identifying the affective dimension of imagination and how imagination operates within a discursive reality, I explore the links between imagination and general psychology, with reference to Activity Theory, fundamental psychological categories, and normativity. Drawing on themes from general psychology can extend the study of imagination, while the study of imagination can in turn inform general psychology. Finally, I address some of the implications of this study for epistemology, education, and critical thinking.

Yoga in major depressive disorder: molecular mechanisms and clinical utility

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mind-body disorder. Cellular aging has been implicated in the pathogenesis of MDD with the altered mind-body communication markers like stress response, immune response, nutrition sensing, and a range of other regulatory feedback systems. In this age of super specializations, one specific target and interventions (preferably a drug) on it are being rigorously sought by the health care community and industry, but have failed in it in the last fifty years in spite of advances in technology. Since, depression is a complex disorder associated with increased incidence of other complex disorders, it must be treated by an integrated holistic approach that can address the complexity of MDD. Interventions targeting accelerated biological aging to increase cellular health in whole body have potential to manage complex conditions like MDD and its overlapping symptoms and comorbidities. Yoga has the potential to be the nexus between, clinical management of MDD and other lifestyle diseases.

Inching Toward a Unified Metatheory for Psychology

Zagaria et al. (2020) have aptly suggested that as a discipline, psychology is a giant with feet of clay. Drawing on the content of introductory textbooks, the authors show that there is little coherence and consensus about the meaning of key psychological terms - including such terms as psychology, mind, behavior. Drawing on evidence marking psychology is a "soft" science, the authors suggest that psychology can profit by adopting the "hard" foundation of evolutionary psychology as its metatheory. While Zagaria et al.'s characterization of psychology's fractious foundation has deep merit, their desire to erect a psychological metatheory on evolutionary psychology is unlikely to solve the problem they so aptly identify. At the least, I suggest a unified metatheory must: (a) establish a shared psychological lexicon; (b) elaborate a methodology that coordinates first-, second- and third-person modes of inquiry, and (c) develop a process model that describes psychological functioning at the biological, psychological and socio-cultural levels of analysis. To illustrate, I describe how contemporary relational and systems frameworks provide a framework that can move us in these directions.

Introduction to the special issue on physics of mind

In recent years, both fields of physics and psychology have made important scientific advances. The emergence of new instruments gave rise to a data-driven neuroscience allowing us to learn about the state of the brain supporting known mental functions and conversely. In parallel, the appearance of new mathematics allowed the development of computational models describing fundamental brain functions and implementing them in technological applications. While emphasizing the methodology of physics, the special issue aims to bring together these trends in both the experimental and theoretical sciences in order to explain some of the most basic mental processes such as perception, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and learning. In this editorial, we define unsolved problems for brain and psychological sciences, discuss possible means toward their respective solutions, and outline some collaborative initiatives aiming toward these goals. The following problems are defined in gradual order of difficulty: what are the universal properties of human behavior across conditions and cultures? What have each culture learned over historical times and why should specific elements of knowledge be accumulated over cultural evolution? Can computational psychiatry help predict, understand, and cure mental disorders? What is the function of art and cultural artifacts such as music, fiction, or poetry for the cognitive system? How to explain the relation between first-person subjective experience and third-person objective physiological data? What neural mechanisms operate on which mental content at the highest levels of organization of the hierarchical brain? How do abstract ideas emerge from sensory-motor contingencies and what are the conditions for the birth of a new concept? Could symmetry play a role in psychogenesis and support the emergence of new hierarchical layers in cognition? How can we start addressing the question of meaning scientifically, and what does it entail for the physical sciences?

From cells to sensations: A window to the physics of mind

Principles of methods for studying particles and fields that cannot be sensed by third-person observers by routine methods can be used to understand the physics of first-person properties of mind. Accordingly, whenever a system exhibits disparate features at multiple levels, unique combination of constraints offered by them direct us towards a solution that will be the first principle of that system. Using this method, it was possible to arrive at a third-person observable solution-point of brain-mind interface. Examination of this location identified a set of unique features that can allow an associatively learned (cue) stimulus to spark hallucinations that form units of first-person internal (inner) sensations reminiscent of stimuli from the associatively learned second item in timescales of milliseconds. It allows us to peep into a virtual space of mind where different modifications and integrations of units of internal sensations generate their different net conformations ranging from perception to an inner sense of hidden relationships that form a hypothesis. Since sparking of inner sensations of the late arriving (when far away) or non-arriving (when hidden) features of items started providing survival advantage, the focus of evolution might have been to optimize this property. Hence, the circuity that generates it can be considered as the primary circuitry of the system. The solution provides several testable predictions. By taking readers through the process of deriving the solution and by explaining how it interconnects disparate findings, it is hoped that the factors determining the physics of mind will become evident.

People's self-reported encounters of Perceiving Mind in Artificial Intelligence

This article presents the data from two surveys that asked about everyday encounters with artificial intelligence (AI) systems that are perceived to have attributes of mind. In response to specific attribute prompts about an AI, the participants qualitatively described a personally-known encounter with an AI. In survey 1 the prompts asked about an AI planning, having memory, controlling resources, or doing something surprising. In survey 2 the prompts asked about an AI experiencing emotion, expressing desires or beliefs, having human-like physical features, or being mistaken for a human. The original responses were culled based on the ratings of multiple coders to eliminate responses that did not adhere to the prompts. This article includes the qualitative responses, coded categories of those qualitative responses, quantitative measures of mind perception and demographics. For interpretation of this data related to people's emotions, see Feeling our Way to Machine Minds: People's Emotions when Perceiving Mind in Artificial Intelligence Shank et al., 2019.

rLung, Mind, and Mental Health: The Notion of "Wind" in Tibetan Conceptions of Mind and Mental Illness

This article presents an analysis of the way in which rlung ("wind, breath") functions as a mode of explanation for what Western medicine regards as "psychiatric" illness, based on field research on the topic of mental health, illness, and healing conducted within a Tibetan population in Darjeeling, northeast India. The article explores this notion of rlung and its relationship to body and mind, in order to examine its role in the causation and treatment of various forms of "mental illness", before analysing some similarities and differences between rlung-related categories and biomedical classifications of mental illness.

The Conference of the Birds: An Old Artistic Concept Making Sense in Modern Sciences

In this article, we will discuss scientific aspects of an old Persian story, Simorgh, in the book of The Conference of the Birds. The story is fulfilled with artistic and philosophical metaphors that make sense in two hot topics of the contemporary modern sciences i.e. cognitive science and complexity science. The poet addresses some humanity’s bygone concerns and fundamental questions about self, the quality that shapes a person’s uniqueness, and essential existence. The sophisticated language used in the poem contains allusions, symbols, and implications that are interpreted in five main topics. We think that the story deserves to be the touchstone for questions on the nature of the mind, including the profound question of humanity’s search for self and meaning of life.

One, no-one and a hundred thousand brains: J.C. Eccles, J.Z. Young and the establishment of the neurosciences (1930s-1960s)

Contemporary neurosciences have grown beyond the limits of a natural science. To its most vocal advocates, the study of the human brain can provide nothing short of the basis for a new science of man-the link between the "natural" and "human" sciences-as a simple consequence of the growing mass of facts relating to this most marvelous organ, accumulated in the last four decades. This straightforward picture of the growing import of the neurosciences simplifies and obscures the myriad different interpretations and images of "the brain" that have inspired the development of the neurosciences. Among them, this chapter will consider two deeply contrasting early images of the brain: the cellular-physiological brain proposed since the 1950s by John Carew Eccles, and the model-"whole" brain championed by John Zachary Young. Eccles' program was focused on the vertebrate synapse, and Young's on the whole brain of an "advanced" invertebrate (the octopus). The former was the programmatic extension of a long neurophysiological tradition, and the latter an outspoken attempt at providing a revolutionary model for the organization of an unprecedented research effort. One underscored continuity and scientific "soundness," and the other promised rupture and new, imaginative solutions to age-old problems. Nevertheless, they have been later lumped together into a single, marvelous and progressive history, or mythology, of the Science of the Brain. This chapter will show how the organizing principle of these two opposed (if almost equally successful) research efforts was not the foggy, ever-changing image of an experimental brain-in-becoming, but the clear, fixed horizon of a promised brain.

A potential mechanism for first-person internal sensation of memory provides evidence for the relationship between learning and LTP induction

Studies conducted to verify learning-induced changes anticipated from Hebb's postulate led to the finding of long-term potentiation (LTP). Even though several correlations have been found between behavioural markers of memory retrieval and LTP, it is not known how memories are retrieved using learning-induced changes. In this context, the following non-correlated findings between learning and LTP induction provide constraints for discovering the mechanism: 1) Requirement of high stimulus intensity for LTP induction in contrast to what is expected for a learning mechanism, 2) Delay of at least 20 to 30 s from stimulation to LTP induction, in contrast to mere milliseconds for associative learning, and 3) A sudden drop in peak-potentiated effect (short-term potentiation) that matches with short-lasting changes expected during working memory and occurs only at the time of delayed LTP induction. When memories are viewed as first-person internal sensations, a newly uncovered mechanism provides explanation for the relationship between memory and LTP. This work interconnects large number of findings from the fields of neuroscience and psychology and provides a further verifiable mechanism of learning.

Head Transplantation: The Immune System, Phantom Sensations, and the Integrated Mind

The principal focus of this paper is to consider the implications of head and neck transplantation surgery on the issue of personal identity. To this end, it is noted that the immune system has not only been established to impose a level of self-identity on bodily cells, it has also been implicated in mental development and the regulation of mental state. In this it serves as a paradigm for the mind as the product of cephalic and extracephalic systems. The importance of bodily systems in identity is then discussed in relation to phantom tissue syndrome. The data strongly indicate that, even if surgically successful, head and neck transplantation will result in the loss of the continuity of personal identity.

Multidimensional brain activity dictated by winner-take-all mechanisms

A novel demon-based architecture is introduced to elucidate brain functions such as pattern recognition during human perception and mental interpretation of visual scenes. Starting from the topological concepts of invariance and persistence, we introduce a Selfridge pandemonium variant of brain activity that takes into account a novel feature, namely, demons that recognize short straight-line segments, curved lines and scene shapes, such as shape interior, density and texture. Low-level representations of objects can be mapped to higher-level views (our mental interpretations): a series of transformations can be gradually applied to a pattern in a visual scene, without affecting its invariant properties. This makes it possible to construct a symbolic multi-dimensional representation of the environment. These representations can be projected continuously to an object that we have seen and continue to see, thanks to the mapping from shapes in our memory to shapes in Euclidean space. Although perceived shapes are 3-dimensional (plus time), the evaluation of shape features (volume, color, contour, closeness, texture, and so on) leads to n-dimensional brain landscapes. Here we discuss the advantages of our parallel, hierarchical model in pattern recognition, computer vision and biological nervous system's evolution.

Conversing as Metaphor of Human Thinking: Is Mind like a Conversation?

How can researchers shape their ideas so that they understand the mind better? This theoretical paper discusses the merits of the conversation metaphor as a means of analyzing the human mind. We will develop arguments concerning conversation as i) a situated and distributed activity, ii) a "product" in perpetual construction, and iii) the amount of credence and belief we afford it. Finally, we will advocate for metaphorical tools that promote a more dynamic conceptualization of human thinking.

Mantras Help the General Psychological Well-Being of College Students: A Pilot Study

The mind receives deep effect of harmonizing from incantatory spiritual verse known as "mantra." This ancient Indian spiritual science of sound vibrations had been used to help the mind, body and life. Students in top-ranking colleges often feel pressurized and complain of depression. Mantras could help ease their stress. This work attempts to study the impact of mantra on the psychological well-being of college students. Volunteers selected and listened to the mantra of their choice in the test period. Psychological tests were conducted before and after the test period. Data collected were analyzed by psychologists. The findings reveal a clear improvement in the general cheerfulness and clarity of mind of the subjects.

Topodynamics of metastable brains

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a "topodynamic" description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research.

Involvement through photography

As a photographer living in Tokyo, I have been visiting Suetsugi village regularly to take photographs and show the printed photographs to the residents. What is the role of photography? What does it mean to be involved in the life of Suetsugi through photography? This article discusses some of the answers to these questions 5 years after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Metaphilosophy of Mind: how Do Minds Investigate Minds? Refutation of the Theocentric View

I shall propose metaphilosophy of mind as the philosophy of mind investigating mind. That is to say, I pose the question of how knowledge of mind provided by cognitive science, broadly construed, is constrained by the epistemic position of the knower, i.e. by the very fact that it is undertaken by a mind. Here I would like to propose a minimal framework, based on two distinctions: (i) the standard one between empirical and conceptual analysis; (ii) a new one, between the internal questions of mind and the boundary questions of mind. I shall then combine these distinctions to arrive at several ways of investigating the mind, the brain and cognition. On this ground, I will discuss the notion of epistemological theocentrism as outlined by Henry Allison and argue against the perspective I call theocentric philosophy of mind. From this angle I will be able to address skepticism which cannot be defeated but actually can be, as I put it, disarmed. Finally, metaphilosophy of mind based on the abovementioned distinctions elicits a perspective that is not sufficiently delineated by cognitive scientists and philosophers: empirical way of addressing the boundary questions of mind.

Only one mind: an artist's exploration of consciousness

The aim of this article is to critique the contemporary scientific reduction of mind to brain and to explore the imaginal realm of consciousness. Through the author's own practice as an engraver, and through the researches and discoveries of free-thinking scientists, philosophers and artists, this realm of the "One Mind" is revealed to be timeless and universal.

Dermatological manifestations of stress in normal and psychiatric populations

This article explores the way stress affects the skin, both at the molecular level, where the skin has an intricate connection to the neurocutaneous and immune systems, and at the clinical level. The concept of psychodermatology is reviewed with regard to the way skin reacts to stress, how stress is a trigger for several common skin diseases, and how neuropsychiatric disorders may have skin manifestations. The article is directed at making the dermatologist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist, and the primary physician familiar with the brain-skin mechanisms involved in stress and the resultant clinical expressions on the skin.

I think, therefore I am? Examining conceptions of the self, soul, and mind

In order to delineate among conceptions of the self, soul, and mind, participants reported where they believe these entities are located in the body and provided definitions of each entity. Results indicated that most people consider the self, soul, and mind localized in specific regions in the body. In contrast to previous research, however, some participants reported that the self is not centralized in one location. Participants tended to locate the self and mind in the head and the soul in the chest. The self and mind were commonly defined in mental terms and the soul as one's essence. These results suggest that people tend to distinguish the soul from the mind, both in how they define each entity and where they locate them in the body. Although some people locate the soul in the same region as the self, most people more closely align the mind with the self.

Conceptualizing mind, body, spirit interconnections through, and beyond, spiritual healing practices

CONTEXT

Although research is increasingly exploring the concept of the mind, body, spirit (MBS) and its relevance to health and well-being, it remains difficult to precisely define it.

OBJECTIVE

This research aims to explore indigenous and non-indigenous spiritual healers' conceptualizations of MBS and consider implications for theory and practice.

DESIGN AND SETTING

A total of 12 spiritual healers from Aotearoa/New Zealand participated in a semi-structured interview about their healing practices.

INTERVENTION

The research interview asked participants to discuss how they conceptualized the mind, body, spirit in their work.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The data were analyzed using interpretative data analysis.

RESULTS

Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which led to the identification of three major themes: MBS interconnections of healing, impacts on the mind and the body, and spiritual aspects of healing. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for concepts of healing and conceptualizations of MBS.

Centenary of Karl Jaspers's general psychopathology: implications for molecular psychiatry

Modern molecular psychiatry benefits immensely from the scientific and technological advances of general neuroscience (including genetics, epigenetics, and proteomics). This “progress” of molecular psychiatry, however, will be to a degree “unbalanced” and “epiphytic” should the development of the corresponding theoretical frameworks and conceptualization tools that allow contextualization of the individual neuroscientific findings within the specific perspective of mental health care issues be neglected. The General Psychopathology, published by Karl Jaspers in 1913, is considered a groundbreaking work in psychiatric literature, having established psychopathology as a space of critical methodological self-reflection, and delineating a scientific methodology specific to psychiatry. With the advance of neurobiology and molecular neuroscience and its adoption in psychiatric research, however, a growing alienation between current research-oriented neuropsychiatry and the classical psychopathological literature is evident. Further, consensus-based international classification criteria, although useful for providing an internationally accepted system of reliable psychiatric diagnostic categories, further contribute to a neglect of genuinely autonomous thought on psychopathology. Nevertheless, many of the unsolved theoretical problems of psychiatry, including those in the areas of nosology, anthropology, ethics, epistemology and methodology, might be fruitfully addressed by a re-examination of classic texts, such as Jaspers’s General Psychopathology, and their further development and adaptation for 21st century psychiatry.

The covariation of independent and dependant variables in neurofeedback: a proposal framework to identify cognitive processes and brain activity variables

This methodological article proposes a framework for analysing the relationship between cognitive processes and brain activity using variables measured by neurofeedback (NF) carried out by functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI NF). Cognitive processes and brain activity variables can be analysed as either the dependant variable or the independent variable. Firstly, we propose two traditional approaches, defined in the article as the "neuropsychological" approach (NP) and the "psychophysiology" approach (PP), to extract dependent and independent variables in NF protocols. Secondly, we suggest that NF can be inspired by the style of inquiry used in neurophenomenology. fMRI NF allows participants to experiment with his or her own cognitive processes and their effects on brain region of interest (ROI) activations simultaneously. Thus, we suggest that fMRI NF could be improved by implementing "the elicitation interview method", which allows the investigator to gather relevant verbatim from participants' introspection on subjective experiences.

Implications of spiritual experiences to the understanding of mind-brain relationship

OBJECTIVE

While there has been a large increase in scientific studies on spirituality, there has been too few of studies of the core of spirituality: spiritual experiences (SE), which often involve altered states of consciousness, reports of anomalous experiences and of consciousness beyond the body. This paper argues that SE, although usually neglected in debates regarding mind-brain relationship (MBR), may provide the much needed enlargement of the empirical basis for advancing the understanding of the MBR.

METHODS

This paper briefly presents and discusses recent scientific investigations on some types of SE (meditative states, end of life and near death experiences, mediumship and alleged memories of previous lives) and their implications to MBR.

RESULTS

Neurofunctional studies of SE have shown that they are related to but not necessarily caused by complex functional patterns in several brain areas. The study of meditative states, as voluntarily induced mind states that influence brain states has been a privileged venue to investigate top-down (mind over brain) causation. End of life and near death experiences offer cases of unexpected adequate mental function under severe brain damage and/or dysfunction. Scientific investigations of several types of SE have provided evidence against materialistic reductionist views of mind.

CONCLUSIONS

The recent trend to scientifically investigate SE has already produced interesting and thought-provoking findings that deserve careful further exploration. Because of their potential implication, these findings may also contribute to the understanding of MBR, which remains an important, yet poorly explored way to investigate human nature.

Mind and consciousness as per j. Krishnamurti

The present article looks at mind and consciousness from the perspective of the eminent Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. He believed in total awareness as being essential for a free mind. Human beings always learned from their past, and it was important that they looked inwards and freed themselves from self-perpetuated torment. It was also necessary that they avoided repression. The society in which we live should be organic, where, although individuals had no choice but to dwell in that society, it was one where the interests of the individual and society were the same. He also maintained that religion was always the result of past conditioning. A mind should be investigative and scientific. One could not get pleasure without difficulty, for which living in totality, not in segments, was a must. We often dwell on one part of the consciousness and miss its holistic aspect. One must uncover the mind layer by layer to achieve complete growth. Deeper delving into it and a study of J. Krishnamurti's philosophy is a must for the understanding of human consciousness, in a manner that is simple, yet abstract and deep.

Psychiatry's Catch 22, Need For Precision, And Placing Schools In Perspective

The catch 22 situation in psychiatry is that for precise diagnostic categories/criteria, we need precise investigative tests, and for precise investigative tests, we need precise diagnostic criteria/categories; and precision in both diagnostics and investigative tests is nonexistent at present. The effort to establish clarity often results in a fresh maze of evidence. In finding the way forward, it is tempting to abandon the scientific method, but that is not possible, since we deal with real human psychopathology, not just concepts to speculate over. Search for clear-cut definitions/diagnostic criteria in psychiatry must be relentless. There is a greater need to be ruthless and blunt in this, rather than being accommodative of diverse opinions. Investigative tests – psychological, serum, CSF, or neuroimaging - are only corroborative at present; they need to become definitive.

Medicalisation appears most prominent in psychiatry; so, diagnostic proliferation and fuzziness appear inevitable. And yet, the established diagnostic entities need to forward greater and conclusive precision. Also, the need for clarity and precision must outweigh pandering to and mollifying diverse interests, moreso in the upcoming revision of diagnostic manuals. This is specially because the DSM-5, being an Association manual, may need to accommodate powerful member lobbies; and ICD-11 may similarly need to cater to diverse country lobbies.

Finding precise biological correlates of psychiatric phenomena, whether through neuroimaging, molecular neurobiology and/or neurogenomics, is the right way forward. It is in the 1.5-kg structure in the cranium that all secrets of psychiatric conditions lie. Social forces, behavioural modification, psychosocial restructuring, study of intrapsychic processes, and philosophical insights are not to be discounted, but they are supplementary to the primary goal – studying and deciphering those brain processes that result in psychiatric malfunction.

Experimental breakthroughs, both in psychiatric aetiology and therapeutics, will come mainly from biology and its adjunct, psychopharmacology; while supplementary and complementary breakthroughs will come from the psychosocial, cognitive and behavioural approaches; the support base will come from phenomenology, epidemiology, nosology and diagnostics; while insights and leads can hopefully come from many fields, especially the psychosocial, the behavioural, the cognitive and the philosophical.

Major energies must now be marshalled towards finding biomarkers and deciphering the precise phenotype–genotype–endophenotype axis of psychiatric disorders. Energies also need to be focussed on unravelling those critical processes in the brain that tip the scale towards psychiatric disorders. At how those critical processes are set into motion by forces de novo, in utero, in the genes and their expression, by the environment's psychopathological social forces – stress, peer pressure, poverty, deprivation, alienation, malnutrition, discrimination of various types (caste, gender, race, etc.), mass conflicts (war, terror attacks, etc.), disasters (natural and man-made), religious/ideological fascism – or social institutions like marriage, family, work place, political governance, etc.

Ultimately, we must decipher how the brain goes into malfunction when such varied forces impinge on it, which precise cortical areas and neuronal cellular and molecular processes are involved in such malfunction and its manifestation, as also which of these are involved when malfunction ceases and health is restored, and the psychosocial processes and institutions which aid such health restoration, as also those which promote well-being and help in primary prevention.

Emphasis on the brain and its intimate neurological and molecular mechanisms will not impinge on, or nullify, importance of the ‘mind,’ wherein subtle and gross brain functions in the form of behaviour, thought and emotions in all their ramifications will continue to be the focus of psychological, cognitive, sociological, psychopharmacological, behavioural and philosophical research. Progress in brain research must move in tandem with progress in ‘mind’ research.

Mind and consciousness in yoga - Vedanta: A comparative analysis with western psychological concepts

Study of mind and consciousness through established scientific methods is often difficult due to the observed-observer dichotomy. Cartesian approach of dualism considering the mind and matter as two diverse and unconnected entities has been questioned by oriental schools of Yoga and Vedanta as well as the recent quantum theories of modern physics. Freudian and Neo-freudian schools based on the Cartesian model have been criticized by the humanistic schools which come much closer to the vedantic approach of unitariness. A comparative analysis of the two approaches is discussed.

Science of the mind

The popular concept and practice of science as an exclusively objective exercise ignores the study of rich and unavoidable subjective phenomena relating to mind. This article proposes that as a process of generating knowledge from perceptual experiences, science-skill is innate to man, which demands precision and effective management of bias, and relies on faith for communication. It manifests in man along two dimensions, one of precision and the other of need and interest. Two more dimensions influence its practice and communicability. This dimensionality accommodates scientific study of diverse human experiences, including religion and spirituality. Evolution of scientific study of mind requires complementing the existing objective techniques with development of techniques for investigating subjective and intuitive experiences. It would also benefit by borrowing concepts and methodologies from ancient Indian philosophies and spiritual practices. Swami Vivekananda's observations are presented in this connection.

The healing journey: incorporating psychological and spiritual dimensions into the care of cancer patients

Research on the factors that promote healing of the body through mind and spirit is at a very early stage. Reliance on experimental designs seems premature; we need much more exploratory research to identify relevant variables and useful therapeutic approaches before applying to them the same methods used to evaluate drugs. The Healing Journey is a program that has been in operation since 1982 at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Ontario. Observational data collection, followed by qualitative analysis has demonstrated benefits for many cancer patients.

Consciousness, cognition and the cognitive apparatus in the vedānta tradition

A human being is a complex entity consisting of the Self (also known as Consciousness), mind, senses and the body. The Vedānta tradition holds that the mind, the senses and the body are essentially different from the Self or Consciousness. It is through consciousness that we are able to know the things of the world, making use of the medium of the mind and the senses. Furthermore, the mind, though material, is able to reveal things, borrowing the light from consciousness. From the phenomenological point of view, we have to answer the following questions: how does one know the mind/the mental operations/the cogitations of the mind? Does the mind know itself? Is it possible? There is, again, the problem of the intentionality of consciousness. Is consciousness intentional? According to Vedānta, consciousness by its very nature is not intentional, but it becomes intentional through the mind. The mind or the ego is not part of the consciousness; on the contrary, it is transcendent to consciousness. It is difficult to spell out the relation between consciousness and the mind. How does consciousness, which is totally different from the mind, get related to the mind in such a way that it makes the latter capable of comprehending the things of the world? The Vedānta tradition provides the answer to this question in terms of the knower-known relation. Consciousness is pure light, self-luminous by its very nature, that is, although it reveals other objects, it is not revealed by anything else. When Sartre describes it as nothingness, bereft of even ego, it is to show that it is pure light revealing objects outside it.

From data processing to mental organs: an interdisciplinary path to cognitive neuroscience

Human brain is a highly evolved coordinating mechanism in the species Homo sapiens. It is only in the last 100 years that extensive knowledge of the intricate structure and complex functioning of the human brain has been acquired, though a lot is yet to be known. However, from the beginning of civilisation, people have been conscious of a 'mind' which has been considered the origin of all scientific and cultural development. Philosophers have discussed at length the various attributes of consciousness. At the same time, most of the philosophical or scientific frameworks have directly or indirectly implied mind-body duality. It is now imperative that we develop an integrated approach to understand the interconnection between mind and consciousness on one hand and brain on the other. This paper begins with the proposition that the structure of the brain is analogous, at least to certain extent, to that of the computer system. Of course, it is much more sophisticated and complex. The second proposition is that the Chomskyean concept of 'mental organs' is a good working hypothesis that tries to characterise this complexity in terms of an innate cognitive framework. By following this dual approach, brain as a data processing system and brain as a superstructure of intricately linked mental organs, we can move toward a better understanding of 'mind' within the framework of empirical science. The one 'mental organ' studied extensively in Chomskyean terms is 'language faculty' which is unique in its relation to brain, mind and consciousness.

Understanding brain, mind and soul: contributions from neurology and neurosurgery

Treatment of diseases of the brain by drugs or surgery necessitates an understanding of its structure and functions. The philosophical neurosurgeon soon encounters difficulties when localising the abstract concepts of mind and soul within the tangible 1300-gram organ containing 100 billion neurones. Hippocrates had focused attention on the brain as the seat of the mind. The tabula rasa postulated by Aristotle cannot be localised to a particular part of the brain with the confidence that we can localise spoken speech to Broca's area or the movement of limbs to the contralateral motor cortex. Galen's localisation of imagination, reasoning, judgement and memory in the cerebral ventricles collapsed once it was evident that the functional units-neurones-lay in the parenchyma of the brain. Experiences gained from accidental injuries (Phineas Gage) or temporal lobe resection (William Beecher Scoville); studies on how we see and hear and more recent data from functional magnetic resonance studies have made us aware of the extensive network of neurones in the cerebral hemispheres that subserve the functions of the mind. The soul or atman, credited with the ability to enliven the body, was located by ancient anatomists and philosophers in the lungs or heart, in the pineal gland (Descartes), and generally in the brain. When the deeper parts of the brain came within the reach of neurosurgeons, the brainstem proved exceptionally delicate and vulnerable. The concept of brain death after irreversible damage to it has made all of us aware of 'the cocktail of brain soup and spark' in the brainstem so necessary for life. If there be a soul in each of us, surely, it is enshrined here.

Brain-mind dyad, human experience, the consciousness tetrad and lattice of mental operations: and further, the need to integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines

Brain, Mind and Consciousness are the research concerns of psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, cognitive neuroscientists and philosophers. All of them are working in different and important ways to understand the workings of the brain, the mysteries of the mind and to grasp that elusive concept called consciousness. Although they are all justified in forwarding their respective researches, it is also necessary to integrate these diverse appearing understandings and try and get a comprehensive perspective that is, hopefully, more than the sum of their parts. There is also the need to understand what each one is doing, and by the other, to understand each other's basic and fundamental ideological and foundational underpinnings. This must be followed by a comprehensive and critical dialogue between the respective disciplines. Moreover, the concept of mind and consciousness in Indian thought needs careful delineation and critical/evidential enquiry to make it internationally relevant. The brain-mind dyad must be understood, with brain as the structural correlate of the mind, and mind as the functional correlate of the brain. To understand human experience, we need a triad of external environment, internal environment and a consciousness that makes sense of both. We need to evolve a consensus on the definition of consciousness, for which a working definition in the form of a Consciousness Tetrad of Default, Aware, Operational and Evolved Consciousness is presented. It is equally necessary to understand the connection between physical changes in the brain and mental operations, and thereby untangle and comprehend the lattice of mental operations. Interdisciplinary work and knowledge sharing, in an atmosphere of healthy give and take of ideas, and with a view to understand the significance of each other's work, and also to critically evaluate the present corpus of knowledge from these diverse appearing fields, and then carry forward from there in a spirit of cooperative but evidential and critical enquiry - this is the goal for this monograph, and the work to follow.

Mind, brain and psychotherapy

There is long-standing debate about superiority of mind over brain, in other words about superiority of mind over matter. And outcome of this debate is going to decide future of psychiatry. The psychiatrists believing in materialism may say that brain is all and by changing neurotransmitters level with new molecules of drugs would cure all illnesses. On the other hand, antipsychiatry activists and some psychotherapists oppose all types of treatment despite of convincing evidence that drug therapy is effective (although sometimes it is not as effective as it claims to be). However, truth lies somewhere in between. Pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy are like two legs of psychiatry and psychiatry cannot walk into a future on one leg. The studies have shown that judicious use of pharmacotherapy along with psychotherapy gives better outcome than any one of them used alone. We must heal dichotomy between mind and brain before we heal the patients.