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Essay / How the Brain Works - 1321
Current research shows that mental events cause physical events, and scientists believe that examining individual nerves is the key to understanding how the brain works as a complete unit. Understanding the brain at the nerve cell level will allow scientists to understand how human consciousness works (Blakeslee, 1992). Additionally, the brain's thalamus is identified as the possible sensory connector because it fires 40 impulses per second that pass through the entire brain (Blakeslee, 1995a). These findings are a serious implication for dualism because they assert that the mind is not physical. If the mind is not physical, it cannot affect the physical body, so the dualistic theory of two-way interactions between body and mind is false. The aforementioned argument is supported by many other scientific facts and objections against dualism. For example, phantom pain is a well-known phenomenon in medicine. When people lose a limb, they often experience painful spasms in parts that no longer exist. Although neuroscience is still developing, scientists assume that sensory conflicts are responsible for this phenomenon (Blakeslee, 1995b). The brain remembers the nerves connected to the missing limb and their previous function, so it can issue commands via those nerves. However, the nerves do not receive feedback from the muscles of the nonexistent limb, so the brain forcibly stops the movement (Blakeslee, 1995b). Over time, the brain creates new nerve pathways and adapts to the new geography of the body (Blakeslee, 1995b), so that the person's perception changes and phantom pain no longer persists. Phantom pain is just one example of how the brain is linked to consciousness. Every perception of the environment and every physical action causes changes middle of paper......p paralysis prevents the body from moving while the mind dreams. In conclusion, the mind is not physical, but there must be a common connection between the body and the mind because several examples show their interaction. Perhaps the picture of the body and mind as entities responsible for our ability to act in the external and internal world (Ryle, 1949) is correct, but it lacks the brain as the link. The brain is obviously the meeting point that perceives sensations from the external and internal world. The mind functions in the internal world and provides thoughts to the brain. The body functions in the outside world and provides sensory information to the brain. The brain combines the two inputs and distributes them between the body and mind. This is how the body and mind can interact even though the mind is immaterial and the body material..