Mind the Brain Guest Editorial

The mind-body problem has lain at the heart of the way we think about human nature throughout modern thought. It became a problem for science in the early nineteenth century when efforts were first made to provide systematic observations on the relationship between mind and brain (Young, 1990). Today we are witnessing a revolution in neuroscience, as researchers chart the circuitry of memory, cognition, and emotion, offering the promise of a chemically based medicine of the mind (Kandel, 2000) But these same words would have been use as apt over 300 years ago, when neurology first emerged as an experimental science (Finger, 2000; Zimmer 2004) From the Greeks came the speculation that the mind is made up of a series of innate powers or faculties which were localized in the hollow ventricles of the brain: Sensation and Imagination in the anterior chamber, Reason in the middle, and Memory in the posterior. When attention shifted to the solid parts of the brain, the faculties were speculatively localized in different areas by different schools. When the innateness of the faculties was challenged by the belief that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, it was not the classification of the faculties which was questioned, but their origin. The question of the mind's role in the economy of the organism in its intercourse with the environment was not a central issue. Attention was diverted from this by the separation of the mind from the brain and from the external world, and the related separation of man from other organisms. Both the empirical study of cerebral localization and the attempt to determine a set of functions which could explain the thought and behaviour of men and animals in their natural environments began with the work of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). While remaining agnostic on the philosophical mind-body problem, he thought he had discovered a method for demonstrating the correlation of innate faculties and identifiable brain areas. With the assessment of one of the major figures in the development of evolutionary psychology, G. H. Lewes, who said, Gall rescued the problem of mental functions from Metaphysics, and made it one of Biology (Young, 1990) One of the seven Da Vincian principles, " corporalita‰ expresses the balance of body and mind. The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise. LeonardoÊs extraordinary physical gifts complemented his intellectual and artistic genius. He …