Editorial

The Study of Human Mind:
Model of MultiCiência
Roberto J. M. Covolan
IFGW-UNICAMP

Brain and mind require hard thinking. Although there is no more immediate experience than the sensation of being ourselves, integrated to the set of perceptions that result from our interaction with the outside world, the brain-mind connection, which allows us such things, remains the most elusive and mysterious reality we know. The fundamental question here is: how do the physiological processes that occur in our brain, almost certainly liable to be described in biophysical, biochemical and neurobiological terms, provide subjective experiences we call as mental ones?

At any rate, this question has been considered for centuries. Nevertheless, we have learnt from history that great part of the success of the modern science was due (and is also due) to something that someone has yet called as “methodological humbleness”. Instead of explaining God and the Universe, core subjects of scholastic speculation, Galileu Galilei (who personally was not humble himself) revolutionized the ways of knowing the world when trying to find mathematical laws that would rule the simpler movements, as the free fall of bodies, seeking on real world an experimental corroboration to his theoretical conjectures.

Most of modern studies about human mind approaches in a same manner. It is not because this one is not a fertile land to speculation and theorization, but the gigantic advancement occurred in the last years in the neuroscience area and the impact produced in specific fields of psychic studies, as the cognitive psychology for example, (1) eloquently show that the findings in the field of natural sciences have much to contribute to the elucidation of questions related to human mind.

Although philosophers of mind, as David Chalmers, consider that the problem of conscience (or, more specifically, what he calls of hard problem, i. e. the problem of how the physical processes of brain cause the subjective experience) will be not solved only by neurosciences, (2) many (including himself) wait that the fundamental findings in this area can open a new sort of theory that allows consider the mental phenomena.

On the other hand, one certainly can not wait the study of human mind is confined to the nature sciences. Hardly, anybody will bet in the existence of natural laws determining moral, ethical or esthetical values, for example. Actually, it is in multidisciplinary articulations, frequently focused on neurosciences, that the main expectancies (and hopes) of real advancement of the knowing of human mind stay. Thus, the study of human mind composes an exemplary model of MultiCiência. This can be appreciated, in a clear way, in this number of the magazine.

In the opening article, professor Iván Izquierdo , reputed neuroscientist and director of Academia Brasileira de Ciências , currently at Centro de Memória do Instituto de Pesquisas Biomédicas da PUC-RS – Porto Alegre, offer us, in a very personal report, um instigative panel about The Human Mind , particularly about the aspects related to the memory. For him, “ The mind is, nowadays, even easy to describe in its most general aspects, but the mental function in each specific circumstance of our lives keeps on a mystery ”.

Similarly to William James, to whom mind is not an entity, but a process, the neurologist Benito Damasceno , of Faculdade de Ciências Médicas da Unicamp - Campinas , states in A Mente Humana: abordagem neuropsicológica that “The human mind is not an isolated or a priori “faculty”, but a complex “activity”, characterized by its systemic structure, mediated nature and historic-social origin”. From this approach, he present us a vision of mental activity while systemic structure and while representation and mediation, besides discussing its socio-interactional origin from findings of psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience and discursive psycholinguistic.

It was mentioned above the need of fundamental findings to fill the “explanatory gap” (Joseph Levine) that obstructs the possibility of see the nexus between brain and mind. Nevertheless, the achievement of new and fundamental results requires sophisticated know-how and advanced instrumentation. In The Cognitive MRI Revolution , Anna Nobre and collaborators, of Departamento de Psicologia Experimental da Universidade de Oxford – England, present an excellent overview about functional magnetic resonance, a technique that is revolutionizing the study of brain dynamics. The article discusses since the basis of this technique to advanced applications through multimodal systems. At the end, after a very good list of references, the reader will find suggestions to reading and indications of extremely interesting webpages.

Seen with admiration and fascination since the Antiquity, the dreams were considered in many cultures as a mean to predict the future according to its presumed oracular and premonitory powers. In Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Sleep and Dreams , Sidarta Ribeiro , neuroscientist of Duke University Medical Center, Duke – USA, presents us an extremely interesting theory from which the dreams might, in fact, perform an important role in the choices and decisions we daily make .

Most of the knowledge we have about human mind is due to studies developed with patients presenting pathologies. Epilepsy is one of the more frequent neurological conditions, affecting a great number of people. In Epilepsia: uma janela para o cérebro , Alexandre Valotta da Silva and Esper Abrão Cavalheiro , of Laboratório de Neurologia Experimental da Universidade Federal de São Paulo , present us how the study of epilepsy has contributed to allow new findings about cerebral functions .

Many researchers believe the appearing of superior cognitive functions in human beings is intimately linked to the language emerging. Our linguistics skills would have allowed the development of competence to the abstract reasoning and the expression of feelings and emotions, being a determinant differential element to distinct us from the other animals. In Brincando com a linguagem e criando sentidos, ou Cognição distribuída e emergência da linguagem , Edson Françozo ( Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem, UNICAMP) , Maria Luiza Cunha Lima ( Universidade do Vale do Rio Verde, UNINCOR ) and Orlando Bisacchi Coelho ( Universidade de Mogi das Cruzes, UMC ), present an instigative article in which the language origin is investigated through computational simulations and experiences performed by robots.

Deepening the robotic question, in Biting the apple: the challenge of Artificial Intelligence , Yurij Castelfranchi , researcher of School of Science Communication – International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste-Italia and of Laboratório de Jornalismo, NUDECRI-Unicamp, presents us, from historic perspective, an actual vision about the possibility of building thinking machines.

Concluding the articles related to the core subject of this edition of MultiCiência, Leonardo Bonilha , post-doctor in cognitive neuroscience at University of Nottingham, England , present us in Mapping the Mind a review about the book Mapping the Mind , written by Rita Carter, highlighting the importance of modern methods to get functional neuroimages of brain.

We know well the sentence “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail” . The set of works assembled here, elaborated by expert researchers in their respective sectors, certainly will provide to reader a good idea about the broad theoretical and experimental instrumental used nowadays to the study of human mind.

Notes:

(1)  See f. ex. Neurological Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience – Issues in Clinical and Cognitive Neuropsychology , ed. Mark D´Esposito (MIT Press, Boston, 2002).

(2)  David J. Chalmers, in The Conscious Mind – In search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996 ), pages 233-42.

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