How the brain creates the mind.

A s the millennium draws to a close, it is apparent that one question towers above all others in the life sciences: How does the set of processes we call mind emerge from the activity of the organ we call brain? The question is hardly new. It has been formulated in one way or another for centuries. Once it became possible to pose the question and not be burned at the stake, it has been asked openly and insistently. Recently the question has preoccupied both the experts—neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and philosophers—and others who wonder about the origin of the mind, specifically the conscious mind. The question of consciousness now occupies center stage because biology in general and neuroscience in particular have been so remarkably successful at unraveling a great many of life’s secrets. More may have been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s—the so-called decade of the brain—than during the entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience. Elucidating the neurobiological basis of the conscious mind—a version of the classic mind-body problem—has become almost a residual challenge. Contemplation of the mind may induce timidity in the contemplator, especially when consciousness becomes the focus of the inquiry. Some thinkers, expert and amateur alike, believe the question may be unanswerable in principle. For others, the relentless and exponential increase in new knowledge may give rise to a vertiginous feeling that no problem can resist the assault of science if only the theory is right and the techniques are powerful enough. The debate is intriguing and even unexpected, as no comparable doubts have been raised over the likelihood of explaining how the brain is responsible for processes such as vision or memory, which are obvious components of the larger process of the conscious mind. The multimedia mind-show occurs constantly as the brain processes external and internal sensory events. As the brain answers the unasked question of who is experiencing the mindshow, the sense of self emerges. by Antonio R. Damasio