I. Observations on Advancement

Image by Erik Charlton on Flickr Courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing

1) The expansion of Psychology has opened the human mind to pharmacological dialogue as well as philosophical. Increasingly, we begin to apply the same types of Darwinian classification found in biology to the ever-deepening multiverse of the human mind. From his observations of hypnosis and dream analysis, Freud founded the pivotal discovery of the human unconscious, an idea that expands our concept of self into a transcendent and fluid psycho-organism that extends beyond our conception. Like time, we can only experience one facet, one moment, of the Self, yet that cell is implicitly interrelated to a web of other influences in which we exist simultaneously, in past and future, in memories and imaginings.  

Yet, nowhere in the physical structure of the brain is there corresponding mechanisms for  Freud’s id, ego, or superego. Nor are there areas of the brain designated to the development of love, trust, or altruism. Although we know from our experience that these are nonetheless elements that exist in our thoughts and actions as humans. However, what we see when interpreting a neuroimage of the mind is at best a map of sensory systems that roughly outlines functionality of the brain as an interface, non-specific to the consciousness which operates within. Therefore, to examine the point at which thought manifests into physical action, neuroscientists have focused on electrochemical interaction in the nervous system and spinal cord. Research on the synapse was pioneered by Sir John Eccles and his colleagues during the early 1950s, as they used the stretch reflex of the peripheral nervous system as a model to examine the interaction between electrochemical impulses of the brain and response of muscle fiber. By passing an electrical current through the sensory neuron in the quadriceps, Eccles was able to observe how the motor neuron produces an excitatory postsynaptic potential, or EPSP,  in response. [4]Conversely, as he passed the same current through a sensory neuron in the opposing muscle to the quadriceps, the hamstring, he witnessed an inhibitory postsynaptic potential manifest in the motor neuron. While the EPSP produced by a single motor/sensory neuron pair was essentially powerless, the sum of several EPSPs from surrounding motor neurons could potentially cause action and produce movement in the muscle tissue. Theologians and philosophers have taken ahold of the synaptic gap as the crux between the “I” and material form, yet to understand the complexity of millions of these gaps and overlapping webs of electrochemical pulses that it takes to create movement, thought, intelligence, is an idea beyond that of individual perception. 

As our studies of self continue, I foresee an emerging importance of out-of-body experiences as critical in solving the mind/body problem. Current work being done by Dr. Sam Parnia of Cornell University and Dr. Peter Fenwick on near death experiences should give greater insight to the mind as a divergent entity capable of consciousness past the point where the brain shuts down and the person, essentially, dies.[5] We inch ever closer to understanding, and as we acquire newfound knowledge of our world the expansion of the universe and human experience nevertheless causes new questions and philosophical problems to surface and spill its ink across the page of history. We have stretched a thin arm into the unknown, what wealths of understanding lie ahead is, for the greater part, undiscovered.