From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 14:32:04 MDT
I purchased Adobe Acrobat v5.0 Full so I could more easily share my on-line subscription articles from SciAm, etc. If anyone
reads this sweet little article I converted below by one of the best minds in the mind/brain/spirit science discipline,
please let me know HOW MUCH the changeover to a text file messed up, if any.
Exsqueeze me if I don't re-read the article, but I bought the program for YOU folks.
Thanks,
Enjoy,
Walter
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How the Brain Creates theMind
We have long wondered how the conscious mind comes to be. Greater understanding of brain function ought to lead to an
eventual solution
By Antonio R. Damasio At the start of the new millennium, it is apparent that one question towers above all others in life
sciences:
COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. How does the set of processes we call mind
emerge from the activity of the organ we call brain? The question is hardly new. It has been formulated in one way or
another for centuries. Once it became possible to pose the question and not be burned at the stake, it has been asked openly
and insistently. Recently the question has preoccupied both the experts-neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and
philosophers
-and others who wonder about the origin of the mind, specifically the conscious mind. The question of consciousness now
occupies center stage because biology in general and neuroscience in particular have been so remarkably successful at
unraveling a great many of life's secrets. More may have been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s-the
so-called decade of the brain-than during the entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience. Elucidating the
neurobiological basis of the conscious mind-a version of the classic mind-body problem-has become almost a residual
challenge. Contemplation of the mind may induce timidity in the contemplator, especially when consciousness becomes the
focus of the inquiry. Some thinkers, expert and amateur alike, believe the question may be unanswerable in principle. For
others, the relentless and exponential increase in new knowledge may give rise to a vertiginous feeling that no problem can
resist the assault of science if only the theory is right and the techniques are powerful enough. The debate is intriguing
and even unexpected, as no comparable doubts have been raised over the likelihood of explaining how the brain is responsible
for processes such as vision or memory, which are obvious components of the larger process of the conscious mind. I am
firmly in the confident camp: a substantial explanation for the mind's emergence from the brain will be produced and perhaps
soon. The giddy feeling, however, is tempered by the acknowledgment of some sobering difficulties. Nothing is more familiar
than the mind. Yet the pilgrim in search of the sources and mechanisms behind the mind embarks on a journey into a strange
and exotic landscape. In no particular order, what follows are the main problems facing those who seek the biological basis
for the conscious mind. The first quandary involves the perspective one must adopt to study the conscious mind in relation
to the brain in which we believe it originates. Anyone's body and brain are observable to third parties; the mind, though,
is observable only to its owner. Multiple individuals confronted with the same body or brain can make the same observations
of that body or brain, but no comparable direct third-person observation is possible for anyone's mind. The body and its
brain are public, exposed, external and unequivocally objective entities. The mind is a private, hidden, internal,
unequivocally subjective entity. How and where then does the dependence of a first-person mind on a third-person body occur
precisely? Techniques used to study the brain include refined brain scans and the measurement of patterns of activity in the
brain's neurons. The naysayers argue that the exhaustive compilation of all these data adds up to correlates of mental
states but nothing resembling an actual mental state. For them, detailed observation of living matter thus leads not to mind
but simply to the details of living mat-
4 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Updated from the December 1999 issue SLIM FILMS
er. The understanding of how living matter generates the sense of self that is the hallmark of a conscious mind-the sense
that the images in my mind are mine and are formed in my perspective-is simply not possible. This argument, though
incorrect, tends to silence most hopeful investigators of the conscious mind. To the pessimists, the conscious-mind problem
seems so intractable that it is not even possible to explain why the mind is even about something-why mental processes
represent internal states or interactions with external objects. (Philosophers refer to this representational quality of the
mind with the confusing term "intentionality.") This argument is false. The final negative contention is the reminder that
elucidating the emergence of the conscious mind depends on the existence of that same conscious mind. Conducting an
investigation with the very instrument being investigated makes both the definition of the problem and the approach to a
solution especially complicated. Given the conflict between observer and observed, we are told, the human intellect is
unlikely to be up to the task of comprehending how mind emerges from brain. This conflict is real, but the notion that it is
insurmountable is inaccurate. In summary, the apparent uniqueness of the conscious-mind problem and the difficulties that
complicate ways to get at that problem generate two effects: they frustrate those researchers committed to finding a
solution and confirm the conviction of others who intuitively believe that a solution is beyond our reach. Evaluating the
Difficulties THOSE WHO CITE the inability of research on the living matter of the brain to reveal the "substance of mind"
assume that the current knowledge of that living matter is sufficient to make such judgment final. This notion is entirely
unacceptable. The current description of neurobiological phenomena is quite incomplete, any way you slice it. We have yet to
resolve numerous details about the function of neurons and circuits at the molecular level; we do not yet grasp the behavior
of populations of neurons within a local brain region; and our understanding of the large-scale systems made up of multiple
brain regions is also incomplete. We are barely beginning to address the fact that interactions among many noncontiguous
brain regions probably yield highly complex biological states that are vastly more than the sum of their parts. In fact, the
explanation of the physics related to biological events is still incomplete. Consequently, declaring the conscious- mind
problem insoluble because we have studied the brain to the hilt and have not found the mind is ludicrous. We have not yet
fully studied either neurobiology or its related physics. For example, at the finest level of description of mind, the swift
construction, manipulation and superposition of many sensory images might require explanation at the quantum level.
Incidentally, the notion of a possible role for quantum physics in the elucidation of mind, an idea usually associated with
mathematical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, is not an endorsement of his specific proposals, namely
that consciousness is based on quantum-level phenomena occurring in the microtubules-constituents of neurons and other
cells. The quantum level of operations might help explain how we have a mind, but I regard it as unnecessary to explain how
we know that we own that mind-the issue I regard as most critical for a comprehensive account of consciousness. The
strangeness of the consciousmind problem mostly reflects ignorance, which limits the imagination and has the curious effect
of making the possible seem impossible. Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has said, "Any suffi- ciently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic." The "technology" of the brain is so complex as to appear magical, or at least
unknowable. The appearance of a gulf between mental states and physical/biological phenomena comes from the large disparity
between two bodies of knowledge-the good understanding of mind we have achieved through centuries of introspection and the
efforts of cognitive science versus the incomplete neural specification we have achieved through the efforts of
neuroscience. But there is no reason to expect that neurobiology cannot bridge the gulf. Nothing indicates that we have
reached the edge of an abyss that would separate, DIMITRY SCHIDLOVSKY; SOURCE: TOOTELL ET AL., IN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE,
MAY 1988 (left); HANNA DAMASIO (above and opposite page)
6 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN THE HIDDEN MIND BRAIN'S BUSINESS is representing other things. Studies with macaques show a remarkable
fidelity between a seen shape (a) and the shape of the neural activity pattern (b) in one of the layers of the primary
visual cortex. NEUROSCIENCE continues to associate specific brain structures with specific tasks. Some language regions are
highlighted in a and b. Color-processing (red) and face-processing
(green) regions are shown in c. One's own body sense depends on the region shown in d. a a b COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN, INC. in principle, the mental from the neural. Therefore, I contend that the biological processes now presumed to
correspond to mind processes in fact are mind processes and will be seen to be so when understood in sufficient detail. I am
not denying the existence of the mind or saying that once we know what we need to know about biology the mind ceases to
exist. I simply believe that the private, personal mind, precious and unique, indeed is biological and will one day be
described in terms both biological and mental. The other main objection to an understanding of mind is that the real con-
flict between observer and observed makes the human intellect unfit to study itself. It is important, however, to point out
that the brain and mind are not a monolith: they have multiple structural levels, and the highest of those levels creates
instruments that permit the observation of the other levels. For example, language endowed the mind with the power to
categorize and manipulate knowledge according to logical principles, and that helps us classify observations as true or
false. We should be modest about the likelihood of ever observing our entire nature. But declaring defeat before we even
make the attempt defies Aristotle's observation that human beings are infinitely curious about their own nature. Reasons for
Optimism MY PROPOSAL for a solution to the conundrum of the conscious mind requires breaking the problem into two parts. The
first concern is how we generate what I call a "movie-in-the-brain." This "movie" is a metaphor for the integrated and uni-
fied composite of diverse sensory images
-visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and others-that constitutes the multimedia show we call mind. The second issue is the
"self" and how we automatically generate a sense of ownership for the movie-in-the-brain. The two parts of the problem are
related, with the latter nested in the former. Separating them is a useful research strategy, as each requires its own
solution. Neuroscientists have been attempting unwittingly to solve the movie-in-thebrain part of the conscious-mind problem
for most of the history of the field. The endeavor of mapping the brain regions involved in constructing the movie began
almost a century and a half ago, when Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke first suggested that different regions of the brain were
involved in processing different aspects of language. More recently, thanks to the advent of ever more sophisticated tools,
the effort has begun to reap handsome rewards. Researchers can now directly record the activity of a single neuron or group
of neurons and relate that activity to aspects of a specific mental state, such as the perception of the color red or of a
curved line. Brain-imaging techniques such as PET (positron emission tomography) scans and fMR (functional magnetic
resonance) scans reveal how different brain regions in a normal, living person are engaged by a certain mental effort, such
as relating a word to an object or learning a particular face. Investigators can determine how molecules within microscopic
neuron circuits participate in such diverse mental tasks, and they can identify the genes necessary for the production and
deployment of those molecules. Progress in this field has been swift ever since David H. Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of Harvard
University provided the first clue for how brain circuits represent the shape of a given object, by demonstrating that
neurons in the primary visual cortex were selectively tuned to respond to edges oriented in varied angles. Hubel and
Margaret S. Livingstone, also at Harvard, later showed that other neurons in the primary visual cortex respond selectively
to color but not shape. And Semir Zeki of University College London found that brain regions that received sensory
information after the primary visual cortex did were specialized for the further processing of color or movement. These
results provided a counterpart to observations made in living neurological patients: damage to distinct regions of the
visual cortices interferes with color perception while leaving discernment of shape and movement intact. A large body of
work, in fact, now points to the existence of a corresponwww. sciam.com THE HIDDEN MIND 7 ANTONIO R. DAMASIO is M. W. Van
Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and
adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. He was born in Portugal and received his M.D.
and Ph.D. from the University of Lisbon. With his wife, Hanna, Damasio created a facility at Iowa dedicated to the
investigation of neurological disorders of mind and behavior. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy
of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Damasio is the author of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason,
and the Human Brain (1994), The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999) and Looking
for Spinoza (forthcoming). THE AUTHOR b c d COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
8 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN THE HIDDEN MIND dence between the structure of an object as taken in by the eye and the pattern of
neuron activity generated within the visual cortex of the organism seeing that object [see illustration on page 6]. Further
remarkable progress involving aspects of the movie-in-the-brain has led to increased insights related to mechanisms of
learning and memory. In rapid succession, research has revealed that the brain uses discrete systems for different types of
learning. The basal ganglia and cerebellum are critical for the acquisition of skills-for example, learning to ride a
bicycle or play a musical instrument. The hippocampus is integral to the learning of facts pertaining to such entities as
people, places or events. And once facts are learned, the long-term memory of those facts relies on multicomponent brain
systems, whose key parts are located in the vast brain expanses known as cerebral cortices. Moreover, the process by which
newly learned facts are consolidated in longterm memory goes beyond properly working hippocampi and cerebral cortices.
Certain processes must take place, at the level of neurons and molecules, so that the neural circuits are etched, so to
speak, with the impressions of a newly learned fact. This etching depends on strengthening or weakening the contacts between
neurons, known as synapses. A provocative finding by Eric R. Kandel of Columbia University and Timothy P. Tully of Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory is that etching the impression requires the synthesis of fresh proteins, which in turn relies on
the engagement of specific genes within the neurons charged with supporting the consolidated memory. These brief
illustrations of progress could be expanded with other revelations from the study of language, emotion and decision making.
Whatever mental function we consider, it is possible to identify distinct parts of the brain that contribute to the
production of a function by working in concert; a close correspondence exists between the appearance of a mental state or
behavior and the activity of selected brain regions. And that correspondence can be established between a given
macroscopically identifiable region (for example, the primary visual cortex, a language- related area or an emotion-related
nucleus) and the microscopic neuron circuits that constitute the region. Most exciting is that these impressive advances in
the study of the brain are a mere beginning. New analytical techniques continuously improve the ability to study neural
function at the molecular level and to investigate the highly complex large-scale phenomena arising from the whole brain.
Revelations from those two areas will make possible ever finer correspondences between brain states and mental states,
between brain and mind. As technology develops and the ingenuity of researchers grows, the fine grain of physical structures
and biological activities that constitute the movie-in-the-brain will gradually come into focus. Confronting the Self THE
MOMENTUM of current research on cognitive neuroscience, and the sheer accumulation of powerful facts, may well convince many
doubters that the neural basis for the movie-in-the-brain can be identified. But the skeptics will still find it difficult
to accept that the second part of the conscious-mind problem-the emergence of a sense of self-can be solved at all. Although
I grant that solving this part of the problem is by no means obvious, a possible solution has been proposed, and a
hypothesis is being tested. The main ideas behind the hypothesis involve the unique representational ability of the brain.
Cells in the kidney or liver perform their assigned functional roles and do not represent any other cells or functions. But
brain cells, at every level of the nervous system, represent entities or events occurring elsewhere in the organism. Brain
cells are assigned by design to be about other things and other doings. They are born cartographers of the geography of an
organism and of the events that take place within that geography. The oft-quoted mystery of the "intentional" mind relative
to the representation of external objects turns out to be no mystery at all. The philosophical despair that surrounds this
"intentionality" hurdle alluded to earlier-why mental states represent internal emotions or interactions with external
objects-lifts with the consideration of the brain in a Darwinian context: evolution has crafted a brain that is in the
business of directly representing the organism and indirectly representing whatever the organism interacts with. The brain's
natural intentionality then takes us to another established fact: the brain possesses devices within its structure that are
designed to manage the life of the organism in such a way that the internal chemical balances indispensable for survival are
maintained at all times. These devices are neither hypothetical nor abstract; they are located in the brain's core, the
brain stem and hypothalamus. The brain devices that regulate life also represent, of necessity, the constantly changing
states of the organism as they occur. In other words, the brain has a natural means to represent the structure and state of
the whole living organism. But how is it possible to move from such a biological self to the sense of ownership of one's
thoughts, the sense that one's thoughts are constructed in one's own perspective, without falling into the trap of invoking
an all-knowing homunculus who interprets one's reality? How is it possible to know about self and surroundings? I have
argued in my book The Feeling of What Happens that the biological foundation for the sense of self can be found in those
brain devices that represent, moment by moment, the continuity of the same individual organism. Simply put, my hypothesis
suggests The pilgrim in search of the mechanisms of the mind journeys into A STRANGE, EXOTIC LANDSCAPE. COPYRIGHT 2002
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. that the brain uses structures designed to map both the organism and external objects to create a
fresh, second-order representation. This representation indicates that the organism, as mapped in the brain, is involved in
interacting with an object, also mapped in the brain. The second- order representation is no abstraction; it occurs in
neural structures such as the thalamus and the cingulate cortices. Such newly minted knowledge adds important information to
the evolving mental process. Specifically, it presents within the mental process the information that the organism is the
owner of the mental process. It volunteers an answer to a question never posed: To whom is this happening? The sense of a
self in the act of knowing is thus created, and that forms the basis for the first-person perspective that characterizes the
conscious mind. Again from an evolutionary perspective, the imperative for a sense of self becomes clear. As Willy Loman's
wife says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: "Attention must be paid!" Imagine a selfaware organism versus the same
type of organism lacking it. A self-aware organism has an incentive to heed the alarm signals provided by the
movie-in-the-brain (for instance, pain caused by a particular object) and plan the future avoidance of such an object.
Evolution of self rewards awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage. With the movie metaphor in mind, if you will, my
solution to the consciousmind problem is that the sense of self in the act of knowing emerges within the movie.
Self-awareness is actually part of the movie and thus creates, within the same frame, the "seen" and the "seer," the
"thought" and the "thinker." There is no separate spectator for the movie-inthe- brain. The idea of spectator is constructed
within the movie, and no ghostly homunculus haunts the theater. Objective brain processes knit the subjectivity of the
conscious mind out of the cloth of sensory mapping. And because the most fundamental sensory mapping pertains to body states
and is imaged as feelings, the sense of self in the act of knowing emerges as a special kind of feeling-the feeling of what
happens in an organism caught in the act of interacting with an object. The Future I WOULD BE FOOLISH to make predictions
about what can and cannot be discovered or about when something might be discovered and the route of a discovery.
Nevertheless, it is probably safe to say that by 2050 sufficient knowledge of biological phenomena will have wiped out the
traditional dualistic separations of body/brain, body/mind and brain/mind. Some observers may fear that by pinning down its
physical structure something as precious and dignified as the human mind may be downgraded or vanish entirely. But
explaining the origins and workings of the mind in biological tissue will not do away with the mind, and the awe we have for
it can be extended to the amazing microstructure of the organism and to the immensely complex functions that allow such a
microstructure to generate the mind. By understanding the mind at a deeper level, we will see it as nature's most complex
set of biological phenomena rather than as a mystery with an unknown nature. The mind will survive explanation, just as a
rose's perfume, its molecular structure deduced, will still smell as sweet. www.sciam.com THE HIDDEN MIND 9 HANNA DAMASIO
THE SENSE OF SELF has a seat in the core of the brain. Stripping away the external anatomy of a human brain shows a number
of deep-seated regions responsible for homeostatic regulation, emotion, wakefulness and the sense of self. Eye, Brain, and
Vision. David H. Hubel. Scientific American Library (W. H. Freeman), 1988. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A
Philosophical Journey into the Brain. Paul M. Churchland. MIT Press, 1995. Consciousness Explained. Daniel C. Dennett.
Little, Brown, 1996. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Antonio R. Damasio.
Harcourt Brace, 1999. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Human Brain. Antonio R. Damasio. Harcourt (forthcoming). MOR
E TO E XPLORE SA COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!"
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