Knowledge of the physical brain is essential. This includes the biology and physics of neurons, neurochemicals, dendrites, synapses, neural networks, neural ensembles, large-scale synchrony, and coordinated neural oscillation.
Yet the physical is only half the story. The other half is the subjective mind, which resides and operates within the brain. Every form of perception, recognition, thought, thinking, self-awareness, executive control, goals, attention, intention, prediction, and learning takes place inside it. The brain’s primary function is to enable our mental states and processes.
The mind — both conscious and unconscious — is a very real phenomenon, active every moment of the day. During any task, whether routine or novel, aspects such as perception, identification, motivation, working memory, and intention operate continually or intermittently.
This directly impacts our understanding of the brain. Since the brain exists to enable the mind, a clear model of the mind — its components and how they function through space and time — offers a powerful pathway for modeling brain activity. Brain signals cannot be encoded or decoded without accurate subjective categories that give them meaning.
The limited attention paid to the mind hinders progress in brain science. Brain signal decoding, for example, remains in its infancy largely because we lack precise mappings between neural activity and the mental components it reflects.
A persistent myth claims the subjective mind is unnecessary for understanding the brain. Materialism supports this view: because the mind is immaterial, it isn’t “real,” can be reduced to the physical brain, and therefore ignored. However, this perspective weakens when we focus on the mind itself. Awareness and conscious experience clearly exist as subjective phenomena. We all see, hear, feel, think, and taste every day.
Consider reading. Without visual perception and related mental processes, reading would be impossible. Letter and word identification, meaning, thoughts, and understanding are essential.
Both the subjective and the physical are at play in any human activity. When mind and brain are recognized as closely connected, the activity of one can be used to map to the other. A person’s intention to “lift my right hand slowly…” directly generates the precise neural signals required for the movement. Brain activity mirrors our intentions with remarkable accuracy.
Dual aspect monism provides an elegant explanation: mind and brain are the same phenomenon, viewed from two perspectives — first-person subjective experience and third-person neural activity.
If the mind can be clearly defined and modeled, focusing on it becomes highly effective. The current underemphasis on the subjective is actually an opportunity. Once accurately understood, the mind can be mapped to coordinated neural networks and brain signals.
Much valuable work is underway in the brain sciences. The missing piece is a serious, precise understanding of the subjective mind. This would enable far more accurate mind-to-brain encoding and brain-to-mind decoding, benefiting applied neuroscience and brain science overall.