Brain science has made great progress toward understanding the brain. Valuable data and an increased understanding are obtained daily — in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging and the rest of the brain sciences. A great deal of valuable knowledge has been accumulated.
However what’s missing is theoretical understanding — in particular a cognitive neuroscience theoretical framework. What is the (conscious and unconscious) mind? What is its relationship to the brain? This is known as the mind brain problem. In what neural form does the mind — sensation and perception, recognition, thought, emotion, language, executive control, goals, attention, intention etc.– take? How does the brain create, represent, mediate or compute our mental phenomena?
Despite vast knowledge, there is little understanding of how brains work (Kotchoubey, Tretter, Braun et al., 2016). As Jeff Hawkins says, “neuroscience is data rich and theory poor.” There’s still no (agreed-upon) brain theory.
Surprisingly little progress has been made on this problem. How the neocortex works is still a mystery (Hawkins, Lewis, Klukas et al., 2019). A brain theory is viewed as a long term goal to be attained in 5 or 10 years, maybe longer. I argue this pessimism is caused not by a lack of knowledge, but a shortage of understanding. There is no agreed upon definition of the mind (Poldrack & Yarkoni, 2016). And even were it defined, how it connects to the brain (the so-called “easy problem of consciousness”) is widely acknowledged to be unsolved as well.
I would argue the subjective or experiential mind is the key to developing a brain theory. After all the purpose of having a brain in the first place (along with regulating the body) is to create recognition, meaning, understanding, emotion, pain, pleasure, the self, motivation, goals, plans, intentions and so on. And since the mind is very closely connected to the brain, understanding the former can lead to an understanding of the latter. Once defined accurately, our mental states and processes (expressed in real time) can be functionally “mapped” to those of the brain.
For example, consider a person who performs the behavioral task “reach for my phone.” When repeated it will activate predictable and definable mental content. It will be somewhat noisy yet also consistent in its activation. It starts with the imagination & intention “to reach.” As reaching begins, the (visual & somatosensory) perception of reaching, and the prediction of future (reach-involved) perception occurs. This includes the perception & prediction of “my arm, hand and fingers” and their motion. Object identification of “my phone,” and associated goals of “I want to send a text” and emotions like “mild desire and excitement” also activate. To understand and accurately label the brain activity involved in “reach for my phone,” the subjective components involved must be listed and defined. Otherwise, you’ll be left with brain activity the meaning of which is both incomplete and inaccurate. Its encoding and decoding rely on the subjective labels of the mind (as listed above) and their meaning.
A mind-based approach to brain understanding is (with the exception of neurophenomenology) new and can seem like a foreign concept. However there’s great news here. Once you define the mental components of interest accurately, you have the foundation of a solution to the mind/brain problem. The more accurately the mind is defined, the more accurately it can be connected to the brain, and vice-versa. Even without a mind model, just a mind-based approach alone enhances brain science fundamentally. The more accurately and precisely-defined the mind, the more accurately and precisely the brain’s activity can be decoded, and encoded.
Seen in a fact-based (what we know for sure about the mind) and inclusive (it includes all mental states and processes) light, the mind becomes a viable path toward creating neural correlates of it. The main requirement is a mind model. This would feature an accurate, precise, and comprehensive definition of its “parts” — a cognitive ontology — and their activity through space and time in the brain. Once in place, such a model can enable (functional, and structural) maps of the brain which correspond to it. And more good news: given an accurate theoretical framework there’s no reason why the construction of an accurate mind/brain model can’t take place — right now!
References
Hawkins, J., Lewis, M., Klukas, M., Purdy, S., Ahmad, S. (2019). A Framework for intelligence and cortical function based on grid cells in the neocortex. Frontiers in Neural Circuits, 1. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2018.00121
Kotchoubey, B., Tretter, F., Braun, H.A., Buchheim, T., Draguhn, A. Fuchs, T., Hasler, F., Hastedt, H., Hinterberger, T., Northoff, G., Rentschgler, I., Schleim, S., Sellmaier, S., Van Elst, L.T., Tschacher, W. (2016). Methodological problems on the way to integrative human neuroscience. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 1. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnint.2016.00041/full\
Poldrack, R.A., Yarkoni, T. (2016). From brain maps to cognitive ontologies: informatics and the search for mental structure. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 587–612. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4701616/