A listener recently posed a question about the soul of the program ”Seriously”. Author Martina Montelius gave a good answer about how we feel of our närmastes state of mind, how we see it in their posture and movements, the way that messing up in the kitchen or close a door. Besides of what we see and hear is affected our state of mind of the smells and flavors. The eternal question of the soul is likely to be particularly topical in our time with the introduction of robots in an increasing number of activities, such as the latest in social – and care for the elderly. Also one can wonder how it is with the spiritual contact, when it is now mostly communicate via e-mail, sms, Facebook and Twitter.
the Question is whether it is possible to construct the soul artificially? Where in the human brain is the localized – or is it not in the brain? It was about 250 years ago that the modern secular notion of the soul arose. In the popular classic ”Soul made flesh” describes Carl Zimmer, ”the other Coperniska revolution”.
with life. The Hebrew word ”nefesh” means a creature that breathes and dies with the body. It was Augustine in the 300’s, introduced to the hellenistic notion of the immortality of the soul to the christian faith. The soul is also a part of the self and imbued with this consciousness. The question of the soul’s emergence belonging to the three great mysteries, by the side of the universe’s origin and life’s creation, as Thomas Mann put it.
In our enlightened time, we are talking rather about ”the mind” in English or ”ésprit” in French. No corresponding words are not in Swedish, but one might say that a person’s mind corresponds to the conscious self. But also the consciousness and the self is difficult to define and locate. According to the dictionaries is consciousness the perception of one’s body, even I and the rest of the world. The american philosopher John Searle has defined it as a condition that starts when we wake up in the morning, after a dreamless sleep until we fall asleep again, fall into a coma or die. Whether you are aware or not, when you dream can be discussed, but you lack then tidsdimensionen and can’t plan, which is important for consciousness.
Cautiously he opened the skull and cut off the blood vessels and membranes in order to obtain the brain, as he finally lifted up for beskådning
to the heart, while the brain was mostly to cold ”heart passions”. The hellenistiske the physician Galen, who lived during the 100’s, after the birth of Christ, held that the soul is localized in the brain’s cavity, which he thought contained livsanden – spiritus or pneuma. It took a long time before it could be established that the brain and especially the cerebral cortex is the seat of thought and consciousness, or the soul. A progress took place during the renaissance, around 1550, when the flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius published ”De humani corporis fabrica”, which included the skilled and detailed drawings of the body and its organs, including the brain, based on his dissections in the anatomical theatre in Padua. The title of the book suggests a paradigm shift. The human body was no longer an image and likeness of God, but a workshop (=fabrica).
It was also a time when there was great scientific breakthrough. Copernicus and Galileo had introduced the helicocentriska view of the world. William Harvey published his book ”De Motu Cordis” in 1628 with the experimental evidence that the blood circulates in a closed cycle – in fact, as great a discovery as that the earth spins around the sun. The English academy of sciences the Royal society founded in 1660. But it was troubled in England by the battles between the parliament and its procurator Oliver Cromwell and king Charles II. The latter was sympathetic to science, and was partly rooted in Oxford with his troops.
Christopher Wren’s drawing of the brain’s blood supply, from Thomas Willis’s book ”Cerebri Anatome”, in 1664.
turbulent time, the summer of the year 1662 was set down a milestone in the history of man. The noise and stench at the High Street must have been overwhelming at the house where a few men gathered around a fresh corpse from one of the executed person. One of the spectators was the later famous architect of St paul’s cathedral Christopher Wren, who was there to make the anatomical drawings. In the center stood a small, stammering red-haired doctor named Thomas Willis. He had first trained to be a priest, but then switched to medicine. It was he who invited the men, and carried dissektionen. Gently, he opened the skull and cut off the blood vessels and membranes in order to obtain the brain, as he finally lifted up for beskådning. Whether or not he murmured: ”gentlemen, here you see the seat of the thoughts, memories, emotions and the self”, we do not know, but it was the first modern investigation of the human brain.
Thomas Willis autopsied a large number of persons, who had suffered from neuropsychiatric diseases and coined the word neurology. He placed the soul to the gray matter to the cerebral cortex, with its many furrows and windings. Willis also discovered that the white matter consists of nerves that connects the hemispheres of the brain and is connected with the body. He wrote several books about his discoveries, the most revolutionary was the ”The soul of brutes” (the brutal human soul, since it was one of the executed person), in which he stated that the soul is first and foremost a biological entity, which die simultaneously with the body. But to explore the brain’s mysteries in particular, as the seat of the soul was controversial. The archbishop of Canterbury condemned this blasphemous idea. Willis, therefore, could not completely dismiss the existence of an immortal soul, which he thought was connected with the striped body. It is located a little further down in the brain from the pineal gland, which Descartes believed that body and soul were united.
We must not forget our own Emanuel Swedenborg proclaimed around 1730: ”It must be taken as a general principle, that the cortical axis… forward life, that is to say, the perception, the understanding and the will, and perform the movements as an expression of nature’s will”.
the brain with its drawings was used until the end of the 1800s. All physicians should know circulus wiliisi, the kärlring on the brain’s underside, where blood supply is deleted.
another important event in the exploration of the brain’s mental activity took place in 1929. Then discovered the austrian physician Hans Berger, a spontaneous activity in the brain. It was the basis for the development of encefalografin EEC, which is still used to explore human consciousness. By showing pictures of faces during a very short time, you can by registering the brain’s electrical activity to see where and when man becomes aware of what one is seeing.
Consciousness enables us to reach a level above the unaware zombie, or your computer
About fifty years later it was discovered that there is an ongoing spontaneous activity in the brain even when you are resting, which is why it is called resting state activity. This discovery was made possible by the new hjärnavbildingsteknikerna, in particular using magnetic resonance. One of the discoverers, Marcus Raichle in St. Louis in the united states called it the brain’s dark energy with the evocation of the cosmic phenomenon. What you analyze is actually the blood oxygen levels in different parts of the brain, which are magnetic and have been shown to correlate well to the hjärncellernas activity.
active even when you are not thinking of anything in particular and maybe just daydreaming. In fact, activated more parts of the brain than when, for example, to resolve to mathematical problems. This mode auto mode (default mode network) is widespread over large parts of the cerebral cortex and involves neuronal circuits where we store our memories. Nervnätverket has been proposed to be the seat of consciousness by it like a conductor pointing out which of the sight-, hearing – or känselintryck you shall perceive.
But how is it with the soul then, the subjective self that is aware of the feelings and atmosphere? Yes, it has been tested by show of cards with the different adjectives. If the subject thought that they expressed their character pressed the a button, while if they described a different person (president George W Bush Jr.) pushed the another button. At the same time was studied the brain with magnetkamerateknik. It turned out that the parts of the brain that was activated by the suitable adjectives overlapped with the brain’s automatic mode.
With different brain can be in a resting adult person to see how sensory input is processed, the memories recalled, reveries and internal monologues generated. Consciousness enables us to reach a level above the unaware zombie, or your computer. Its function is also to seek the pleasurable and avoid pain. The little child enjoying when the parent cuddle, talk and sing with it, in the same way as the adult can enjoy to zoom down a ski slope, see a beautiful painting or a view, or eat a good meal. This is mediated to a large part of the striped body, where Willis partially accommodated the soul. Not completely wrong when it is included in the brain dopamininnehållande hedonistic system. With mri, we can see that it is active already in the newborn.
