MAIS 615 - Assignment #3

Making Sense of the Brain

Shelly Lasichuk

Student # 3264493

February 16, 2018

Introduction

Within this essay I will be discussing the components of the brain and how the brain connects with the

body to create the human experience. The experience of being human begins with the fact that people,

like other mammals, have a limbic system that provides us with primary emotions, which are necessary

in order to care about ourselves and others (Lewis et al., 2000). More than just having the ability to live,

human beings have the ability to formulate thoughts, have feelings, experience emotions, reason and

cognitively experience consciousness (Damasio, 1994). Beyond the cognitive experience of

consciousness, it has been stated by many throughout time that humans also have a ‘soul’ and each

person has a subjective experience of the world in which they live. Through past experience and

memories, humans create somatic markers that provide them with the means to avoid unpleasant life

circumstances (Morgan, 2003) and when one experiences a situation in spite of their somatic markers,

their ability to be present and perceive the event provides the ‘soul’ with meaning.

The Limbic Brain

In 1879 Paul Broca made a finding that the brains of all mammals have a limbic lobe” (Lewis et al., 2000,

24). Considering primary emotions depend on having a limbic system (Damasio, 1994), mammals not

only give birth to their young, but they also nurse, defend, raise, and interact with their young

throughout a mammals early development (Lewis et al., 2000). Although we may take a mammal’s

ability to raise their young for granted, the ability for a living organism to care is “a revolution of social

evolution” (Lewis et al., 2000, 25). As a result of the limbic system, “Mammals form close-knit, mutually

nurturant social groups – families – in which members spend time touching and caring for one

another…parents nourish and safeguard their young, and each other, from the hostile world outside

their group…a mammal will risk and sometimes lose its life to protect a child or mate from attack”

(Lewis et al., 2000, 26). Not only does the limbic brain provide mammals with the ability to care for one
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another but it also permits mammals to play, sing, and otherwise communicate with one another (Lewis

et al., 2000). “Vocal communication between a mammal and offspring is universal” (Lewis et al., 2000,

26). If a mother leaves her new born offspring, mammals such as kittens or puppies will begin to cry

incessantly (Lewis et al., 2000). A mammal’s ability to play with one another is an activity unique to

animals possessing a limbic brain (Lewis et al., 2000).

“The limbic system is an area of the brain that is crucial in the expression and regulation of emotions”

(Berger, 2008, 213). The three major parts of the limbic system are the amygdala, the hippocampus, and

the hypothalamus (Berger, 2008). The amygdala is a very small part of the brain that registers emotions,

especially fear (Berger, 2008). The proper functioning of the amygdala is important since fear can

overwhelm the prefrontal cortex which can disturb a person’s ability to reason (Berger, 2008).

Unfortunately, if a person experiences too much fear of a recurring nature, the amygdala can become

hypersensitive (Berger, 213). Alternatively, “when the amygdala is surgically removed from animals,

they are fearless in situations that should scare them” (Berger, 2008, 214). The amygdala also provides a

person with the ability to respond to facial expressions which allows for social referencing (Berger,

2008). The hippocampus is located next to the amygdala in the brain (Berger, 2008). As a central

processor of memory, the hippocampus is especially responsible for the memory of locations (Berger,

2008). As a result, the hippocampus provides the amygdala with memory when the amygdala

experiences anxiety (Berger, 2008). The hypothalamus, a third area of the limbic system, “responds to

signals from the amygdala and the hippocampus to produce hormones that activate other parts of the

brain and body” (Berger, 2008, 214). “If excessive stress hormones flood the brain, part of the

hippocampus may be destroyed… [and] permanent deficits in learning and memory may result” (Berger,
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2008, 214). The hypothalamus is stimulated by the hippocampus and the amygdala to produce

corticotropin-releasing horomone (CRH) (Berger, 2008). When the hypothalamus produces CRH it signals

the pituitary gland to produce adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). When ACTH is produced by the

pituitary gland, it triggers the adrenal cortex to produce glucocorticoids (CORT). The chain of events that

occur in the brain and body when stress is experienced is important because prolonged physiological

responses to stress can result in a variety of problems including physical and mental health disorders,

poor emotional regulation, and cognitive impairments (Berger, 2008).

The Triune Brain

“Dr. Paul MacLean, an evolutionary neuroanatomist and senior research scientist at the National

Institute of Mental Health, has argued that the human brain is comprised of three distinct sub-brains,

each the product of a separate age in evolutionary history…his neuroevolutionary finding of a three-in-

one, or triune, brain” (Lewis et al., 2000, 21) which include the reptilian brain, the limbic brain and the

neocortex (new brain) (Lewis et al., 2000). The reptilian brain, which includes the brain stem and

cerebellum, is responsible for the life support systems of the human body including having control over

the ability to breathe and swallow as well as mechanisms such as the startle reflex, keeping the heart

beating, and the visual tracking system (Lewis et al., 2000). “As long as the reptilian brain survives, it will

keep the heart beating, the lungs expanding and relaxing, [and] salt and water balanced in the blood”

(Lewis et al., 2000, 23). “According to Damasio (1999), areas of the brain stem work with the forebrain

structures of the cingulate cortex and perfrontal cortex to generate consciousness, including emotional

states… damage to the brain stem most often causes the loss of all consciousness” (Franks, 2006, 49).

The newest brain, the neocortex, holds the ability to speak, write, plan and reason (Lewis et al., 2000).

Our ability to experience the senses, have awareness, conscious motor control and have a will, are a
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result of the neocortex brain (Lewis et al., 2000). “The neocortical orchestration of our experiential

world sometimes leads to a surprising disjuncture of consciousness, the optical illusion of the self”

(Lewis et al., 2000, 27).

Emotions, Feelings, and Reason

Damasio (1994) states that “our emotions are triggered only after an evaluative, voluntary,

nonautomatic mental process” (130). Under certain circumstances, such as with emotional bias,

emotions and feelings can disturb the ability to reason (Damasio, 1994), yet the absence of emotion and

feeling also compromises rationality and a person’s ability “to decide in consonance with a sense of

personal future, social convention, and moral principle” (Damasio, 1994, xii). When a person finds they

are unable to control their emotions, and/or find that their emotions are misdirected, the result can be

a person displaying irrational behavior (Damasio, 1994). Likewise, irrational behavior can result from a

reduction in emotion (Damasio, 1994). Damasio (1994) proposes that human reason probably

developed in response to the mechanism of biological regulation including the biological regulation of

emotion and feeling. Damasio (1994) also proposes that “even after reasoning strategies become

established in the formative years, their effective deployment probably depends, to a considerable

extent, on a continued ability to experience feelings” (Damasio, 1994, xii). Feelings provide humans with

the ability to make decisions through logic (Damasio, 1994). “Emotion and feeling, along with the covert

physiological machinery underlying them, assist us with the daunting task of predicting an uncertain

future and planning our actions accordingly” (Damasio, 1994, xiii). Emotions are important in the study

of the brain because it is the experience of emotions that “moves us to action” (Franks, 2006, 38).
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Damasio (1994) proposes “that human reason depends on several brain systems, working in concert

across many levels of neuronal organization…from the prefrontal cortices to the hypothalamus and

brain stem, [to] cooperate in the making of reason” (Damasio, 1994, xiii). Damasio (1994) discusses that

the brain uses the same neural edifice for reason as it does to regulate emotions and feelings, and that

“emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a role in human reason” (Damasio, 1994, xiii).

According to Damasio (1994) feelings do not only rely on the limbic system but also the brain’s

prefrontal cortices, and signals from the body, and “conceptualizes the essence of feelings as something

you can see through a window that opens directly onto a continuously updated image of the structure

and state of the body…a feeling is the momentary view” (Damasio, 1994, xiv).

Feelings are a cognitive perception that turns the brain into the body’s “captive audience” (Damasio,

1994, xv). As a representation of the brain, the body may act as a frame of reference for the mind

“rather than some absolute external reality… for the constructions we make of the world around us and

for the construction of the ever-present sense of subjectivity that is part and parcel of our experiences”

(Damasio, 1994, xvi). Furthermore, through the studying of patients with prefrontal damage Damasio

(1994) concluded that “reason and the experience of emotion decline together” (54).

Cognition

Since life first began on Earth, organisms have been created with mechanisms to automatically maintain

life (Franks, 2006). For humans, these life maintaining mechanisms include immune responses, basic

reflexes, and metabolic regulation, as well as the ability to detect pain and pleasure in order to

determine what needs to be avoided and what should be sought (Franks, 2006). Also included in the list

of life maintaining mechanisms are appetites such as sex, thirst and hunger (Franks, 2006). Franks (2006)

cites Carter’s (1999) insight that “from an evolutionary point of view, emotion is the set of ‘mute
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survival mechanisms rooted in the body’” (53). Franks (2006) states that LeDoux and Damasio have

found the lived experience of emotion to be greatly impacted by “feeling and its feedback that affects

the original emotion and the importance of feeling to what it is to be human” (53). Franks (2006) cites

Clore and Ortony (2000) who propose that “the cognitive component of emotion is the representation

of the emotional meaning” (56) and whose definition of cognition includes perception, attention,

memory, action, and, appraisal, but “stops after the representation” (Franks, 2006, 56). Franks (2006)

cites LeDoux (1996) who concludes that emotion and cognition are thought to be “separate but

interacting mental functions mediated by separate but interacting brain systems” (Franks, 2006, 57).

Frank’s (2006) notes that when humans are traumatized areas of the brain can continue to perceive

emotions and accurately identify those emotions, yet the individual’s ability to determine the

significance of a particular stimuli may be lost. Consciousness is important because it provides an

opportunity to “think ahead and predict the probability of [an object] being present in a given

environment, so that you can avoid, preemptively, rather than just have to react to its presence in an

emergency” (Damasio, 1994, 133). Damasio (1994) states “brains can have many intervening steps in

the circuits mediating between stimulus and response, and still have no mind, if they do not meet an

essential condition: the ability to display images internally and to order those images in a process called

thought” (89).

The Mind

Lewis et al. (2000) explains that the brain is similar to other organs in that it is the collection of similar

cells. Within the brain there is cell-to-cell signaling occurring. This cell-to-cell signaling is both electrical

and chemical. The chemical signals are the neurotransmitters. When neurotransmitters are blocked, the

state of the mind can be changed. Vision, memory, thought, pain, consciousness and emotionality can
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all be affected by a block in neurotransmitters or a substance that mimics neurotransmitters (Lewis et

al., 2000). Damasio (1994) states that there is no region in the brain that simultaneously processes

representations from all the senses. Damasio’s (1994) view “is that having a mind means that an

organism forms neural representations which can become images, be manipulated in a process called

thought, and eventually influence behavior by helping to predict the future, plan accordingly, and

choose the next action… the process by which neural representations… become images in our minds

that we experience as belonging to us” (90).

Damasio (1994) feels that the constructions we make of the world around us are based on various

images that we have perceived from our past, and that we recall these images in order to organize our

future. As a result, the constructions of the brain are real to the person whose mind has created those

constructions (Damasio, 1994). Damasio (1994) concludes that the mind’s constructions are created

through perception, memory, and reasoning [to] construct our sense of subjectivity as part of our bodily

experience. “The mind had to be first about the body…on the basis of the ground reference that the

body continuously provides” (Damasio, 1994, xvi); since it is the body that provides the brain with a

topic to apply representations (Damasio, 1994). Damasio (1994) states that without the brain’s ability

“to display images internally and to order those images in a process called thought” (89) there would be

no mind. Damasio (1994) explains that it is perhaps timing that provides “our strong sense of mind

integration… by synchronizing sets of neural activity in separate brain regions… within approximately the

same window of time… [making it] possible to link the parts behind the scenes and create the

impression that it all happens in the same place” (95). Damasio (1994) declares that if there is a

malfunction of the timing mechanism then integration or disintegration would occur and result in
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altered states of being, such as what happens with confusion caused by head injury or other brain

diseases such as schizophrenia.

The Subjective Conscious Experience

Chalmers (1995) formulated "the hard problem" of consciousness (1995) to describe the problem the

disciplines have with not being able to explain what the subjective experience of consciousness is.

Chalmers (1995) explains that the easy problems of consciousness are “directly susceptible to the

standard methods of cognitive science… [and are] straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms

of computational or neural mechanisms” (2). The hard problem, on the other hand, is the subjective

experience of a person (Chalmers, 1995). Unlike the easy problems of consciousness, which can be

explained because “they concern the explanation of cognitive abilities and functions” (Chalmers, 1995,

4), the hard problem is hard because “it is not a problem about the performance of functions”

(Chalmers, 1995, 4) but rather a mystery. Damasio (1994) ponders “how is it that we are conscious of

the world around us, that we know what we know, and that we know what we know?” (xvii). Even so,

Damasio (1994) proclaims that in spite of the unanswered questions regarding “who we are as we are”

(87) what is known is that “we are complex living organisms with a body and a nervous system” (87).

Damasio (1994) states that the “body and brain form an indissociable organism… [where] the brain

receives signals not only from the body but from parts of itself that receive signals from the body” (88).

Perhaps it is the brain’s ability to receive signals from parts of its self that creates the subjective

experience of consciousness?

Through the use of new methods and techniques in cognitive neuroscience, including multichannel
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electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), neuroelectric and neuromagnetic

source imaging, positron emission tomography (PET), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

new insights and empirical evidence on brain functions are being gathered. Vaitl et al. (2005) state that

through using advanced technology to view changes in the brain during altered states of consciousness

(ASC), such as in the case of schizophrenia or dreaming , the answers to the hard problem of

consciousness are getting closer. For example, Vaitl et al. (2005) conducted analysis and research on the

subject of ASC and found one anomaly in processing in schizophrenics to be “attributions of

schizophrenia to a walking dream” (112). The authors conclude that “subjective reality is created

continuously by processes in the brain…consciousness requires intact brain tissue, metabolic

homeostasis, a moderate level of arousal, a balanced interplay of inhibitory and excitatory networks,

and midrange environmental conditions… as soon as one of these prerequisites for reliable assembly

formation is lacking, alterations of consciousness are likely to occur” (117). Even with advanced methods

and techniques in neuroscience, the hard problem of consciousness remains unanswered.

Alter (2003) describes the concept of ‘qualia’ as the certain properties characterizing what it is like to

have a conscious subjective experience. Alter (2003) then describes the differing thought experiments

involved in relating qualia to the physical world. Alter (2003) concludes that perhaps “studying whether

there is something it is like to be a bat is in certain respects more tractable than studying what it is like

to be a bat” (812). According to Damasio (1994) consciousness is “the realization of the nexus between

object and emotional bodily state” (132), that occurs when we have “the feeling of the emotion in

connection to the object that excited it” (132). Hence, Damasio (1994) proposes that subjectivity

emerges when the object is perceived and responded to. An interesting aspect that can explain an
aspect of the subjective experience of conscious has been found through attempts to develop ‘machine

consciousness’. Prasad and Starzyk (2010), and others in the field of artificial intelligence, have found

that their attempts to create ‘machine consciousness’ has been wrought with difficulties and remains

unsuccessful because consciousness develops through past experiences, and memory of those past

experiences , which machines do not have.

The Soul

According to Damasio (1994) feelings form the base for what has been described as the human soul or

spirit. The “soul” has been identified and named the psyche, subjectivity, personality, or consciousness

throughout time (Marsden, MAIS 615, Unit 5). In early modernity people were not able to determine a

difference between suffering and physical pain “if the body hurt, then its meaning was sought in the

moral or emotional conflicts in the person’s life” (Marsden, MAIS 615, Unit 5) and this suffering was

perceived as an opportunity to consider how to renew the spirit and clarify ones moral standing

(Marsden, MAIS 615, Unit 5). It is recognized that emotions such as grief or humiliation, as well as life

circumstances such as divorce or sexual abuse, can result in the experience of pain (Marsden, MAIS 615,

Unit 5). When we are violated by another, whether physically or emotionally, it is recognized that “the

boundaries of the body are also the boundaries of the self, and we tend to believe that the people and

institutions that populate our world are committed, or should be committed, to respecting and

protecting the integrity of our beings” (Arnault, 2003, 169). Arnault (2003) cites Amery’s (2003) view

that a person’s reaction to a case of torture of another person is typically that of horror; since we

consider the violation of the boundaries of the body sacrosanct, in that we feel it is the subjectivity of

the person who is actually being tortured. As well, in making a determination about a particular

situation, people will consider factors such as social location, social experiences, personal history, and
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circumstances (Arnault, 2003, 170). “The soul breathes through the body, and suffering, whether it

starts in the skin or in a mental image, happens in the flesh” (Damasio, 1994, xvii).

Damasio (1994) explains that it is through the process of unpleasant bodily experiences that somatic

markers are acquired. Damasio (1994) created the somatic marker hypothesis to describe his conclusion

that when an unpleasant gut feeling is experienced, an image is created and our subconscious then uses

that image to automatically indicate to us that we need to avoid a similar image in the future (Damasio,

1994). The unpleasant gut feeling is somatic and the image is the marker (Damasio, 1994). Through the

use of somatic markers “under the control of an internal preference system and under the influence of

an external set of circumstances which include not only entities and events with which the organism

must interact, but also social conventions and ethical rules” (Damasio, 1994, 179).

When we are faced with a unpleasant experience that we have not been able to avoid and its relenting

nature has become too much to bear, the human ‘soul’ can make sense of the world we live in and the

experiences that we. Pain and illness are often treated as similar states of being since they both remind

people of how fragile our existence is and remind us of how much of our human experience is based on

the experience of the body… “invariably, pain forces the question of its meaning” (Morgan, 2003, 310).

How much of what we feel as pain or pleasure, and how much significance is applied to either condition,

is affected by emotion and memory, since we factor both into our determinations of what future

outcomes we may face, which creates or diminishes additional feelings of distress, anxiety, anger and/or

resentment based on projected fears and hopes (Morgan, 2003). The “dynamic between the body’s
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experience and our experience of the body, between somatics and semiotics suggests that pain and

suffering embodies the experience of the individual, including memory, anticipation and loss, and not

least the quest for meaning and redeeming hopes” (Morgan, 2003, 315).

Conclusion

The human brain’s ability to connect to the body to create the human experience is complex and

involves using past experiences and memory to provide a person with the information and knowledge to

make determinations about what a person is experiencing using emotions as a guide (Franks, 2006).

“One reason why emotion is so critical to the study of the brain is that its embodiment moves us to

action” (Franks, 2006, 40). In order to recognize pain, and hence know what to avoid in the future, the

brain responds to feelings experienced by the body and reacts with emotion in order to make a

cognitive thought and ultimately reason on how best to proceed in the future (Damasio, 1994).

“Achieving survival coincides with the ultimate reduction of unpleasant body states and the attaining of

homeostatic ones” (Damasio, 1994, 179). If our somatic markers are not enough to keep us from an

unpleasant body state, our subjective experience of consciousness may pay attention to ensure the

experience is registered within our ‘soul’. Damasio (1994) proposes “that subjectivity emerges...in the

act of perceiving and responding to an object” (243) and hence perhaps the subjective experience of

consciousness is useful in regaining one’s ability to reason. Perhaps this is what Descartes’ means by “I

think therefore I am”? Through the process of perceiving and responding to the self, the self exists.
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