The Originality of Descartes Theory about the Pineal Gland

Lokhorst, Gert-Jan C.; Kaitaro, Timo

doi:10.1076/jhin.10.1.6.5629

Cited by 41 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Through all of antiquity and, aside from Swedenborg's work, the seventeenth century, the cortex enjoyed scant interest (Karenberg, 2009). For Descartes, it was the firm yet mobile pineal gland where the soul, the immaterial mind, inseparable from consciousness and thought, had its most immediate association with the mechanistic body (Lokhorst and Kaitaro, 2001). For him, this structure, awash in 'psychic spirits', was 'the part of the brain in which the soul executes all of its principal operations' and where it is most immediately affected 'only by the brain' (Descartes, in Lokhorst and Kaitaro, 2001, pp.…”

Section: Localising the Seat Of The Soulmentioning

confidence: 99%

The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture

Ommen

Deventer

2011

Subjectivity

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Neuroscience may be read as part of a historical search for an integrative and agentive centre. The prefrontal cortices, the dominant locus of the executive functions, which includes the control of cognitive processes and the regulation of self in the process of fulfilling intentions, is currently such a centre. This attribution is complexified through a deconstructive reading of texts by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg. What emerge are dynamics that decentre attempts to determine a point from which agency may proceed. It is argued that the grounds for centric claims simultaneously undermine such ambitions.

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Section: Localising the Seat Of The Soulmentioning

confidence: 99%

The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture

Ommen

Deventer

2011

Subjectivity

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“…Famously, Descartes (1594-1650) regarded the pineal gland as the point of contact between the soul, body, and the place where our thoughts are formed [5,7,17,22] ( Fig. 1 and cover figure).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

History of the pineal gland

Shoja

Hoepfner

Agutter³

et al. 2015

Childs Nerv Syst

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“…With few exceptions (most noticeably that of panpsychism: [3]) most theories of the mind throughout history related it to the body and its various parts, including the heart in Aristotle's view [4] and the endocrine pineal gland in the work of Descartes [5]. Early physicians Hippocrates [6] and Galen [7] were among the first influential proponents of the central role of the brain in the operation of the mind based on anatomical and physiological observations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mind-Brain Relationship as a Mathematical Problem

Ascoli

2013

ISRN Neuroscience

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This paper aims to frame certain fundamental aspects of the human mind (content and meaning of mental states) and foundational elements of brain computation (spatial and temporal patterns of neural activity) so as to enable at least in principle their integration within one and the same quantitative representation. Through the history of science, similar approaches have been instrumental to bridge other seemingly mysterious scientific phenomena, such as thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, optics and electromagnetism, or chemistry and quantum physics, among several other examples. Identifying the relevant levels of analysis is important to define proper mathematical formalisms for describing the brain and the mind, such that they could be mapped onto each other in order to explain their equivalence. Based on these premises, we overview the potential of neural connectivity to provide highly informative constraints on brain computational process. Moreover, we outline approaches for representing cognitive and emotional states geometrically with semantic maps. Next, we summarize leading theoretical framework that might serve as an explanatory bridge between neural connectivity and mental space. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of this framework for human communication and our view of reality. We conclude by analyzing the practical requirements to manage the necessary data for solving the mind-brain problem from this perspective.

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The Originality of Descartes Theory about the Pineal Gland

Cited by 41 publications

References 0 publications

The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture

The economy of centre within the aneconomy of neurological architecture

History of the pineal gland

The Mind-Brain Relationship as a Mathematical Problem

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