Searching for the place of the mind

You look up and look at the sky. The blue you see, where is it? You know that in reality that blue is not in the immense celestial vault (if you think it is there, look for it the next time you travel by plane). But then, where is it located? Is it in the brain?

So many conventional scientists would say. let’s look for it. The light that our eyes drink reaches the retina, from there it passes to the optic nerve and finally to the visual cortex, in the posterior part of the brain. However, what arrives there are not images, but simple electrical impulses. We can measure many processes that occur in the brain, but what we measure is chemical or electrical activity, not the qualities of our immediate experience: attention and intention, colors and smells, sensations and emotions.

In the brain activity that we directly observe there is no anguish or enthusiasm, there is no pain, no pleasure, no serenity. Neither red nor blue. In And the brain created man (Fate), the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio argues that the mind emerges from the activity not only of the brain, but of the whole body. The blue of the sky, however, we will not find it in the body either.

Where is the mind?

The mind does not allow itself to be identified as we do with the objects that usually surround us. It is real, but elusive. The mind it is not in a physical and concrete place, but distributed in a wide network of relationships which include the brain, the body as a whole and the world of our experience. In any case, the blue of the sky arises from the encounter between atmospheric light and your gaze.

Through neuroscience we increasingly know more about the chemistry of brain processes and their correlation with certain mental states. It is evident that the brain conditions our mental experience.

However, despite the efforts of many researchers, there is still no way to prove that the mind is reduced to the brain. There is a gulf between the descriptions of brain processes, no matter how sophisticated they are, and what we directly feel and experienceas explained by the Nobel Prize in Physics Erwin Schrödinger in his classic work Mind and matter.

After more than a century of neurophysiological studies, from the scientific method we have no way of detecting consciousness, that is, the mental experience as we experience it from within, your experience of being who you are and of feeling everything around you. However, your conscious experience, like the one you are reading these lines right now, is unquestionable.

The brain is the most complex biological structure we know of.a sea of ​​watery tissues containing about one hundred billion nerve cells or neurons, forming an intricate jungle in which each neuron is connected, on average, with another seven thousand neurons, in an astonishing network of connections that are constantly renewed.

plasticity of the brain

In 1998 it was discovered that the adult brain continually produces new neurons: has enormous plasticity immense capacity to transform based on what we do, think and feel. Already the Aragonese Nobel Prize Santiago Ramon y Cajal He said that every person, if they set their minds to it, can sculpt their own brain.

“The path is made by walking,” wrote Machado. In a way, the path of our mind carves the paths through which our brain travels.

Today we know, for example, that professional musicians who have played for tens of thousands of hours have highly developed areas of the brain related to finger movement. and that London taxi drivers with many years of experience have a specially developed area of ​​the brain (posterior hippocampus) concerned with the memory of complex three-dimensional spatial maps. There are also well-documented cases of brain lesions that have regenerated over the years. In fact, the brain transforms and renews itself by following the paths that the mind opens.

The limitations of science to approach the mind

we currently have fascinating technologies for brain explorationsuch as functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). But the images that they provide us are imprecise if we compare them with the complexity of what they try to represent.

Besides, each brain is unique and responds differently depending, for example, on whether the person is right-handed or left-handed, female or male, young or old. and the same brain responds to the same tests differently depending on how the person feels at that moment. These technologies often give us an average of data from different people, which is useful, but limited.

Besides, they do not even directly measure brain activity, but infer it from other magnitudes (electromagnetic waves). And as if that were not enough, greater brain activity does not necessarily mean better performance: to perform the same intellectual task, people who are more expert in it, or who have a higher IQ, show less, not more brain activity (of the Likewise, the heart rate is lower in elite athletes than in people with a sedentary lifestyle). in such a way that the images these technologies generate are not sharp photographs, but sketches based on numerous conjectures.

Brain research has come a long way in recent years. But there are key questions for which science has no answer.

Since 2009, an extraordinary attempt to map the connections of the human brain, the Human Connectome Project, which has the collaboration of more than half a dozen universities. The The images of the brain that this project generates are spectacular. They will help us, for example, to understand what happens in it when certain injuries occur. But even so, even if the largest supercomputer could exhaustively analyze all the connections between all brain processes, he would have no way of deducing that they are correlated with conscious experience.

As much as we study the materials from which the brain is made, there is nothing in these complex molecules that has the capacity to create conscious thoughts and experiences. We know dozens of substances that act on certain mental states (exciting, relaxing, sleepy), but we know nothing of how mere chemistry could give rise to conscious experience.

He conventional scientific paradigmwhich only takes as real what can be measured and considers the study of consciousness taboo, reveal its limitations here. Trying to understand consciousness exclusively through brain mechanisms, without taking into account our conscious experience, is like trying to swim without entering the water.

The brain-mind relationship

The relationship between the brain and the mind it can, to some extent, be compared to that between a piano and a piece of music. The piano is necessary for the music to play, but the music is not inside the piano. Deterioration of the piano keys and strings will affect or even impede musical performance. Similarly, brain injuries affect the mind, but this does not mean that the mind is in the brain.

The mind depends on the brain, but it is not inside it, just as the music is not inside the piano. Searching for the essence of emotions, sensations and thoughts in the molecules of the brain is, in a way, like searching for the essence of a Chopin nocturne by analyzing the ivory and strings of the piano on which it was performed.

Consciousness is like the observer looking through the telescope of science to see things like the brain and its intricate complexity. Everything we know about the brain we know through consciousness. But the telescope (the scientific method) does not allow the observer (consciousness) to contemplate.

There is other traditions of exploration of consciousness through techniques that allow attention to be developed and focused internally. In this field, the buddhist psychology, which collects an experience of more than two thousand years of studies and meditative practices. According to her, mental activity does not emerge from the brain but from the so-called substratum of consciousness (alayavijnana)which we access every night during the deep sleep phase.

Our understanding of the brain has advanced enormously. This last word sums it up: enormously. The mind is enormous, and it does not allow itself to be confined to the limits of the brain. For science, conscious experience remains a mystery. And at the same time it is, for you, the closest, the most intimate and the most immediate.

Our mind is somehow always present in what it perceives. In the sounds you hear, in the shapes and colors you see. The eye does not see itself until it meets a mirror; meditation is one of the mirrors that allow the mind to see itself. to some extent, because the mind does not allow itself to be reduced to an objectand it is as elusive as the blue of the sky.

look inside

Many meditation techniques They help us to carefully observe the mind and its contents. Try following these steps:

In a comfortable, relaxed and attentive posture, do three deep breaths and let the breath continue with its natural rhythm. With half-closed eyes, pay attention first to sensations that come through the body or the senses without distracting you and without trying to control them. Then focus your attention directly on the mental experience. Calmly observe the images, desires, emotions or thoughts that arise without being carried away by or controlling them. Just look at the great space of the mind. With the body and mind relaxed, with the breath flowing naturally and without effort, contemplate attentively the space of the mind and all that emerges in it without identifying with its contents, without trying to empower or silence them. Witness how they manifest without trying to change them. if you get distractedreturn to focus on the breath, relax and observe the images, feelings and ideas that emerge.