How the brain works in relation to the mind is largely unknown. The good news is that valuable data and incremental understanding continue to accumulate daily across neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, and related fields.
What is still missing is theoretical understanding. What exactly is consciousness? What is the conscious and unconscious mind? There is no agreed-upon definition of the mind (Poldrack & Yarkoni, 2016). And even if it were clearly defined, how it connects to the brain — the so-called “easy problem of consciousness” — remains unsolved. How does the brain create or enable sensation and perception, recognition, thought, thinking, emotion, language, executive control, goals, attention, intention, and related mental states and processes? The mind-brain problem persists.
Despite extensive knowledge, there is surprisingly little understanding of how brains actually work (Kotchoubey, Tretter, Braun et al., 2016). As Jeff Hawkins has noted, neuroscience is “data rich and theory poor.”
This lack of mind understanding is directly reflected in our limited brain understanding. There is no widely accepted brain theory. Even the workings of the neocortex remain a mystery (Hawkins, Lewis, Klukas et al., 2019). A comprehensive brain theory is generally viewed as a distant goal, perhaps a decade or more away.
I argue that the mind is the key to developing such a theory. After all, the primary purpose of the brain — beyond regulating the body — is to enable recognition, meaning, understanding, emotion, motivation, plans, ideas, and the full range of mental life. Because the mind and brain are very closely connected, a clear understanding of the former can illuminate the latter. Once mental states and processes are defined accurately in real time, they can be functionally mapped to their neural correlates.
For example, consider the repeated task “reach for my phone.” This activates predictable and definable mental content. It begins with imagination and intention to reach, followed by visual and somatosensory perception of the movement, along with predictions of future sensations. It also includes perception of one’s arm, hand, and fingers, goals (to grasp the phone), object identification, associated goals (send a text, communicate with a friend), and emotions (mild desire and excitement).
A mind-based approach to understanding the brain is still relatively new (outside of neurophenomenology). Like any new paradigm, it may initially seem unfamiliar. However, once the relevant mental components are defined accurately, they provide a strong foundation for solving the mind/brain problem. The more precisely the mind is defined, the more accurately it can be encoded to brain activity — and decoded from it.
When viewed through a fact-based and inclusive lens — one that accounts for all mental states and processes — the mind becomes a viable pathway to creating accurate neural correlates. The main requirement is a solid mind model: its core parts (a cognitive ontology) and how they function through space and time in the brain. The good news is such a model is achievable, enabling a model and theory of the physical brain.
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. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2018.00121
- Kotchoubey, B., Tretter, F., Braun, H.A., et al. (2016). Methodological problems on the way to integrative human neuroscience. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. 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/