Mind : The Myth and Reality

The functioning of brain, one of the organs of human body, is called mind. Mind is a phenomenon that takes shape from the complexity of the connections between these neurons. It is these neurons in the brain that create everything that we get to know through the five senses, the memories, thoughts, consciousness, emotions, etc. The cells in the neurons communicate with each other. It is for this reason we are able to gather information from our surroundings, interpret the information, remember the experiences and survive by responding to the situations.

The human brain is always provoked by the external stimulus coming from the five senses. At the same time it also coordinates many activities in the human body happening at multiple levels. But our consciousness gets to know only a very few of these activities. We identify only those which occur to our consciousness as our thoughts and actions. And we only identify those which we get to know as our activity or thought. We might not even identify some of these things. We might not even have answers if been asked how these things happened. With the help of FMRI scanning, scientists have been able to understand that we get to know about these thoughts only after a minimum of 350 milli seconds to 6 seconds after the activities have taken place in our brain.

The function of FMRI is to show the changing patterns in the blood flow occurring in the brain as we think or do each activity. By taking that into consideration in a proportionate manner, the scientists can tell, to a certain extent, what we think in accordance to a particular situation. It has been discovered that the distribution of blood through various parts of the neo cortex will change based on the amount of metabolic activities in the brain cells. More blood flows towards those parts where more activities tend to happen. The reflection method called Regional Cerebral Blood Flow RCBF has been formulated based on this fact. It has reached a stage where activities happening in the brain can be observed while a person is in the process of thinking using the help of imaging techniques like PET (Positron Emission Tomography).

The most remarkable characteristic of a neural system is its ability to handle the information. Gathering information from the surroundings, interpreting the same, remembering a certain part of them and thereby deciding how the body should be reacting to the surroundings - the neural system performs all these functions (duties) as a result of the activities of the neural centers. Even though the development of the neural system is based on the genetically coded system, plasticity is another specialty. Here plasticity implies how the connections between the interior parts of a neural system change with the external stimuli. This special characteristic is the basis for learning and memory. One can derive that as much plasticity there is in the brain, that much developed it is. An organism can show different kinds of plasticities. Latest studies reveal that the neural system produces far more neurons than necessary.

A child is born with crores and millions cells. The neuron connections are formed even before the birth in order to perform the most fundamental activities in the body like heartbeat, breathing etc. On the other hand the neuron connections which help the child to acquaint and react to its surroundings are formed as it goes through similar experiences. As the child grows neuron connections are created to determine each of its behavioural traits.Actually mind is only a hypothesis, interpreted in a presupposed manner, of the internal communications as understood by us.
Conscious mind, sub-conscious mind, unconscious mind are all just hypothetical ideas. They all indicate the same. They are just presuppositions used to describe the brain functions or the internal communications. Actually they merely exist in imagination. It is simply that the brain functions, which have been formed as a result of evolution for over billions of years, or the mind, which has achieved a state of oneness, are a result of millions of years of evolution. The intuition that there is someone inside us, spiritual knowledge, etc. is mere intuitions. Actually the reason for such intuitions happening within us could be due to discrepancies in the brain. Self consciousness is just a coordination of billions of cells and organs - formed by combining these cells, found necessary (as suitable for survival) as part of evolution.

A neurologist has the ability to make the spiritual experiences amazing with the help of electrodes. Certain kind of spiritual experiences may happen to people who have been taking medicines or drugs for a long duration. Quaint sensory experiences may also be felt when brain is affected in an accident or when there is a disorder in the brain function due to a disease. The consciousness we tend to experience different from our body is an evolutionarily obtained specialty. There is nothing surprising in it once we understand that it is a coordination that has happened as an evolutionary necessity.

Prasad Amore