Brain science has made great progress toward understanding the brain. Valuable data and better understanding accumulate daily: in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging and the rest of the brain sciences.
What’s missing however is theoretical understanding. What exactly IS consciousness? The (conscious and unconscious) mind? 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 unsolved as well. In what neural form does sensation and perception, recognition, thought, thinking, emotion, language, executive control, goals, attention, intention and so on take? How does the brain create, represent, mediate or compute these mental states and processes? The mind brain problem remains unsolved.
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.”
This lack of mind understanding is reflected by a lack of brain understanding. There is no brain theory. 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 a decade or longer.
I argue the mind, including subjective experience, 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, plans, ideas and so on. And since the mind is very closely connected to the brain, understanding the former will shed light on the latter. Once defined accurately, our mental states and processes (expressed in real time) can be functionally “mapped” to their neural correlate.
For example, consider the behavioral task “reach for my phone.” When repeated it activates predictable and definable mental content. It will be somewhat noisy, yet also consistent in its activation. It starts with the imagination & intention “to reach.” Then 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. Goals (to grasp my phone), object identification (ex “my phone”), associated goals (“send a text, communicate with my friend”) and emotions (mild desire & excitement) can also activate. .
A mind-based approach to the brain is (with the exception of neurophenomenology) a new concept. Like any new paradigm it can seem strange or foreign. However there’s good news. 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 (encoded) to the brain and vice-versa (decoded).
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: 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 then structural) maps of the brain which correspond to it.
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/