The biology of mind Origins and structures of mind, brain, and consciousness.doc

the biology of mind - origins and structures of mind, brain, and consciousnessm. deric bownds.table of contents201preface2chapter 1: thinking about thinking 5how do we define mind and consciousness?awarenessintrospection and reflectionhow does consciousness emerge from a brain/body?defining the problemassembling an explanationorganism and environmentwhere is the i?part i - evolving mindchapter 2: origins of mind13origins of sensing and actingsimple forms of behaviorcommunication between cellsreflexes and interneuronsevolution of the nervous systemadaptations and increasing complexitybiological diversityorigins of minds, perceptions, and affectthe simplest form of mindconsciousness and the evolution of sensory organsperceptions and new behaviorschapter 3: structures of mind 28origins and structures of the vertebrate nervous systemlayers of the brainthe cerebral cortexmodern studies of brain functionassociation of functions with different brain regionsspecializations of the cerebral hemispheresimaging the activity of the brainchapter 4: primate mind 41the question of animal consciousnesstransitions from monkeys to hominidsupright posturelarger brainsstages in hominid emergenceorigins of human intelligenceepisodic intelligencethe great apes: selves and otherssocialization and other skills among the chimpsdeveloping a concept of selfawareness of the mental states of otherschapter 5: hominid mind 53the mimetic intelligence of early hominidskinesic communicationsocial cohesion and body languagesorigins of languageinternal narrativelanguage as an adaptationevolution of brain structures supporting languagelanguage and the evolutionary treethe emergence of modern humansevidence for the out-of-africa hypothesesco-evolution of humans and their toolsthe origins of mythic intelligencewhat caused the transition to upper paleolithic culture? evolutionary psychology-the search for a universal mindgenetic arguments for an evolved psychologyevolution of cooperationevidence from cross-cultural studieslisting and evaluating human universalsthe evolution of ideas and customsthe concept of memesevolution of memespart ii - developing mindchapter 6: plastic mind 70an outline of brain developmentorigins of plasticitya hierarchy of developmental circuits from innate to learned the wiring of developing brainspathways to the cerebral cortexplasticity in forming the visual cortexexperience guides the formation of successful connections adult brains can change their nerve connectionsexpansion and contraction of cortical areascortical plasticity and the phantom limb phenomenonsocial experience can alter brain structurelimits of brain plasticitymemory is a form of brain plasticitylong-term memorymodels of recognition and memoryprocedural memoryolfactory memoriesthe sexual brain-plasticity induced by hormoneshormonal influences on behaviorhormonal influences on visuospatial skillschapter 7: minds and selves 90stages in the development of human selveseffects of rich versus impoverished environmentsthe role of languagethe cerebral hemispheres as selvesself boundariesselves are modular constructionsthe example of musical intelligencehow many selves to a customer?selves, genes, and environmentsframing the issue of nature and nurturephysical environments and selvescultural influences on selfthe relativity of thought systemspart iii - society of mindchapter 8: perceiving mind 102ecology of sensing and actingperception focuses on changeperception is filtered and directed by many factorsdistinguishing between sensation and perceptionperception of spatial relationshipsvisual systemsself-experiment: a look at vision and its muscular correlatesour visual brainvisual information is processed in parallel streamsform, motion, and colorthe what and where systemsvisual pathways outside the cortexensembles of cells encode faces and other iconsinformation streams flow forward, backward, and sideways a binding process underlies visual perceptionneural correlates of visual consciousnesschapter 9: acting mind 120action-the interface of mind and environmenta movement-oriented view of mind and consciousnesskinesthetic intelligenceaction repertoiresparallel actionsmovement exercises that reveal underlying mechanismsneuronal pathways underlying actionmovement generation by darwin machineschapter 10: emotional mind 130defining emotionsemotions are evolutionary adaptationsemotions and the physical environmentemotions and social exchangesubcortical systems underlying emotionsthe autonomic background of emotionsbrainstem modulation of attention and appetiteother correlations of chemistry and emotional behaviorhigher levels of emotional mindemotional mind as a foundation of rational mindlateral organization of emotionsemotional responses can be more rapid than reasoned ones central role of the amygdalaperception of emotional and cognitive pathwaysfacial musculature and the communication of emotionsmisapplication of ancestral emotions-the chronic stress responsechapter 11: linguistic mind 149the language instinctuniversal languagethe case of language as an evolutionary adaptationthe learning of languagegenetic determinants of language abilitylanguage development and brain structurelanguage development as inventionbrain mechanisms of languagemultiple language areas in the cortexlanguage as accessory to other fundamental brain mechanisms metaphor and the construction of languagepart iv - modern mindchapter 12: conscious mind 159the mind/body problemcan the problem of consciousness be solved?the machinery of awarenessthe brains time and space: the disappearance of iplastic representations of time and spacethe futility of asking where does it all come together? sleep and other altered states of consciousnessstages of sleep and dreamingmystical experienceshumor and laughterneural correlates and models of consciousnessbrain structures required for conscious awarenessgenerating an apparent iintrospection and the self systemcomputer metaphorschapter 13: theoretic mind 174emergence of the modern mindgraphic inventionearly theoretic societiesmerging of individual minds and external memory storesparallel expression of ancient and modern mindsconflict of paleolithic and modern mindspaleolithic adaptationsmythic components of modern intelligenceaddressing pluralismancient and modern minds in an electronic agefuture mindteleological schemesthe theme of encapsulationthe evolution of evolutionbibliography185prefaceuntil recently the study of mind, consciousness, and feelings has been a subject for philosophy and religion, outside the province of hard science. this has changed in just the past few years, as advances in anthropology, animal behavior, evolutionary theory, linguistics, molecular neurobiology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience have brought us to the threshold of resolving questions that have occupied philosophers for millennia:how does the human brain generate a self?what is the nature of the narrative i that we experience in our heads?what is the relationship between reason and emotion?how do genetic and environmental factors interact to determine the structure of our brains?interdisciplinary approaches to these questions are making it possible to construct models of mind and emotion that are amenable to experimental tests. the message of this book is that each of us is a society of minds that emerge from our evolutionary history and from the way our brains form as we grow up in a particular natural ecology and cultural setting. each chapter contributes a few perspectives on the society of mind that forms, describing a subset of its elements. from our evolutionary history we derive the genetic instructions with which we begin life, and the particular mind and brain that each of us then grows are shaped and patterned by our surroundings. there are many roads to understanding our minds, many different windows through which we must peer. we approach the target from different directions when we take up the perspectives provided by neurobiology, cognitive psychology, animal behavior, linguistics, and evolutionary biology. we need to consider successive glimpses of different aspects of mind. there are many ways to model ourselves, multiple versions of this is i. we can utilize information on how our nervous systems evolved over millions of years, as well as high-technology gadgets designed to peer inside our brains as they work. this book tries to mix these two approaches-to assemble a description of our minds as a vast collective of agents that interact to construct an unconscious background out of which a narrative i emerges. you may well discover that the new ideas we suggest change your everyday perceptions and actions.this writing began for the purpose of supporting a course for both science and non-science majors at the university of wisconsin in madison. it has proved useful in offering a continuous background, overview, and storyline that supports presentation of current work in each of the areas covered. each chapter provides the core material for 1 to 3 of the approximately 45 lectures in a standard semester. this present book is an effort to share with a wider audience some of the fascination and excitement that have permeated both public and university lectures on the subjects it addresses. it falls somewhere in between a traditional academic text and a popular account. you will have an easier time with the book if you have had an introductory high school or college biology course. sidebars are used at intervals to emphasize main points or self-exercises. at the end of each chapter is a summary, followed by thought questions and suggestions for further reading. key words are italicized and defined in a glossary at the end of the book. if you would like more information on a particular subject that interests you, the references provided for each chapter should enable you to pursue the matter further. detailed citations that support many of the factual statements made in the text can be found in a draft of this book on the world wide web at .in parts of this book, topics have been grouped in a way that corresponds to our subjective living experience, things we do every day-hence the chapters on perceiving mind, acting mind, emotional mind, and linguistic mind. the ideas can become more real and interesting if we use our subjective experience to engage them, and occasionally simple exercises are suggested to illustrate some of the mechanisms we consider. such exercises can be instructive and fun if we dont lose sight of two points. first, what we think and feel is just the tip of the iceberg, compared with what is really going on in our brains. what we are aware of is something like the display on a computer screen as distinguished from the inner working of the computer. second, our subjective experience can be very biased and distorted by factors of which we are unaware. numerous psychological experiments have documented that our perceptions are not necessarily naive, reporting actual events outside or inside our bodies. rather, they can be influenced by what we or someone else expects us to perceive. this is why traditional scientific inquiry insists on eventually putting our subjective insights into a form that can be tested impersonally by independent observers. each of us can imagine that a particular process is going on inside our head, but it will remain thoroughly hidden there until its presence can be inferred from a third-person experimental demonstration.this book encourages you to weave, through its ideas about how our minds work, a fabric of your own personal experience, feeling the richness deepen as these ideas inform your introspection about the mechanisms of your thinking, feeling, and acting. our brains can rearrange space, time, thoughts, and emotions. some of these processes can be made accessible to our awareness through simple mental exercises. it is not too difficult to sense motor programs of which we are usually unaware, to separate thoughts from emotions, and to note some of the ways in which we generate selves. being aware of the minds activities in the fractions of a second after new situations arise can have the practical consequence of offering some new options for our behavior. questioning our common-sense perceptions of reality can also create a feeling of strangeness. brain mechanisms are not guaranteed to feel familiar, warm, and cuddly. the objective reality we assume to be outside ourselves depends on our particular processes of perceiving it.we begin with some background information in chapter 1, thinking about thinking, which defines some terms and considers how a biological explanation of mind and consciousness might be approached. it is a necessary background for the four main parts of the book. part i, evolving mind, is a description of our evolutionary history, starting with the big bang that created the universe and culminated in minds that can write and read a page like this one. chapter 2, origins of mind, is an overview of the path from the appearance of the first simple behaviors of bacteria to the complex routines of our own brains, discussing the possible origins of such phenomena as sensations, perceptions, and emotions. it also offers a simple description of some of the basic processes that underlie organic evolution. chapter 3, structures of mind, describes how our modern human minds encapsulate a series of more primitive minds and brains that arose during vertebrate evolution. it provides an introduction to brain structures and some modern techniques used to study the brain. chapter 4, primate mind, begins with a brief general discussion of the minds of animals and then focuses on the primate line from which we are derived, examining similarities and differences between our minds and those of monkeys and apes. chapter 5, hominid mind, discusses stages in the evolution of intelligence in early hominids, the origins of language, and the emergence of modern humans. we consider some of the arguments that there is a universal evolved human psychology: that in many of our reproductive and social behaviors, we appear to express unconscious psychological mechanisms that evolved to meet conditions of a vanished time hundreds of thousands of years ago, long before the invention of agriculture and cities, when humans existed as bands of hunter-gatherers.part ii, developing mind, describes how the templates set by our evolutionary history engage an ongoing interaction with the actual physical and cultural environment we face to generate the structures and modules of our modern minds and selves. chapter 6, plastic mind, gives a brief outline of the development of our brains and discusses the plasticity in this process that evolved to permit us to adapt to novel or unpredictable environments. this plasticity is maintained to some extent in our adult brains, and it underlies both the learning of new skills and facts and the ability to recover from brain injuries. our brains can actually rewire themselves when we learn new manual skills or learn to discriminate some sensory input in a more detailed way. far from being locked in, as was thought until only a few years ago, many nerve connections in our brains are constantly shuffling about, testing what works best. chapter 7, minds and selves, discusses the development and construction of our human selves. this process requires elaborate feats of learning and memory and draws on mechanisms that are a continuation of those that were active during the early development of the brain. we look at stages in human development and then consider interesting clues to the nature of a self that are obtained from studies on genetics, abnormal development, and patients with brain lesions. nothing escapes the nudging of our genes. they set the limits on our repertoires of development and behavior. this is not to say we are their prisoners, but rather that we should appreciate how our options have been shaped by them.part iii of the book, society of mind, takes a plunge into thinking about the many mind, brain, and body modules that underlie our perceptions and actions in the world-modules that form as a consequence of our evolutionary and individual developmental histories. chapter 8, perceiving mind, offers a brief description of how our brains automatically filter and select, through processes of which we are largely unconscious, what fraction of the mass of incoming sensory information impinging on us is relevant for awareness. we frequently see in the external world what our previous experience leads us to expect to see, not what is really there. this is contrary to our common-sense notion that we see a world out there as it is, objectively. after a brief review of some characteristics of our sensing and perceiving, we shift our focus to visual competence. studies on the visual brains of cats, monkeys, and humans have yielded fascinating insights into what visual consciousness is and where it resides. chapter 9, acting mind, emphasizes the perspective that the most fundamental role of a biological mind is to move a biological body, and to do so quickly if danger is nearby. mind and brain need to be defined in a way that considers the whole body and its ongoing reciprocal interactions with its world. this chapter offers a brief description of some of the brain structures involved