成人期个体心理理论的发展、研究范式与神经机制

成人心理理论的发展有助于个体顺利地进行社会互动,更好地适应社会。个体的心理理论能力会随着个体认知能力的发展以及大脑的发育而呈现出不断发展变化的趋势。研究者采取众多研究范式测量了成人心理理论。在进行心理理论加工时,青春期个体更多的激活了内侧前额叶皮层的后部,而青年期个体更多的激活了右颞上沟。根据研究结果,学者们构建了两成分认知模型、共享回路与中线结构整合模型以及心理理论多层次模型来解释成人心理理论能力。在进一步的研究中,成人心理理论的研究还应开发有效的研究范式来逐步揭示心理理论本身发展的特征、心理理论与外界因素如生活环境的关系以及解读互动心理的特征。     

The Inner Game of Sport: is Everything in the Brain?

The article deals with the following: (1) Three brain imaging studies on athletes are evaluated. What do these neuroscientific studies tell us about the brain and mind of the athlete? (2) Empirical investigations will need a neuro-theory of mind if they are to make the leap from neural activity to the mental. The article looks at such a theory, Gerald Edelman's ‘Neural Darwinism’. What are the implications of such a theory for sport science and philosophy of sport? (3) The article appreciates some of the neurosciences applications, but questions the hope of giving a complete theory of mind.     

The politics of mental illness

What is needed today is a biologically grounded explanation of behavior, one that moves beyond the so‐called mind‐body problem. Yet no solution will be found by philosophers who refuse to learn about how brains and bodies work, or by neuroscientists pursuing experimental research based on outmoded or blatantly anti‐biological theories. Churchland's book proposes a solution: to come by a unified theory of the mind‐brain philosophers have to work together with neuroscientists. Yet Churchland's vision of a unified theory is based on an assumption that, while widely held, may not adequately reflect brain functioning in the production of behavior, namely, the assumption that brain processes represent. The present paper proposes an alternative view, suggesting that patterns of neural activity do not ‘represent’ anything, that brains do not ‘read’ or ‘transform’ representations, and that brains do not require representations to produce goal‐directed behavior. Representations are replaced by self‐organizing neural processes that achieve a certain end‐state of interaction between the organism and its environment in a flexible and adaptive manner. Some of the implications of this view for neuroscientific research and the philosophy of mind are outlined.     

Neurodualism: People Assume that the Brain Affects the Mind more than the Mind Affects the Brain

People commonly think of the mind and the brain as distinct entities that interact, a view known as dualism. At the same time, the public widely acknowledges that science attributes all mental phenomena to the workings of a material brain, a view at odds with dualism. How do people reconcile these conflicting perspectives? We propose that people distort claims about the brain from the wider culture to fit their dualist belief that minds and brains are distinct, interacting entities: Exposure to cultural discourse about the brain as the physical basis for the mind prompts people to posit that mind–brain interactions are asymmetric, such that the brain is able to affect the mind more than vice versa. We term this hybrid intuitive theory neurodualism. Five studies involving both thought experiments and naturalistic scenarios provided evidence of neurodualism among laypeople and, to some extent, even practicing psychotherapists. For example, lay participants reported that “a change in a person's brain” is accompanied by “a change in the person's mind” more often than vice versa. Similarly, when asked to imagine that “future scientists were able to alter exactly 25% of a person's brain,” participants reported larger corresponding changes in the person's mind than in the opposite direction. Participants also showed a similarly asymmetric pattern favoring the brain over the mind in naturalistic scenarios. By uncovering people's intuitive theories of the mind–brain relation, the results provide insights into societal phenomena such as the allure of neuroscience and common misperceptions of mental health treatments.     

Is atypical development necessarily a window on the normal mind/brain?: The case of Williams syndrome

In this paper I challenge the accepted view that atypical development necessarily serves as a window on the normal mind/brain. Such a stance ignores the dynamics of development. Rather I submit that the development of many atypical groups cannot be thought of in terms of a normal brain with whole cortical circuits intact or impaired, as in the adult neuropsychological model, because the brains of genetically impaired children develop differently at multiple levels – brain anatomy, brain chemistry, temporal patterns of brain activity – throughout embryogenesis and postnatal development. This is briefly illustrated with reference to studies of Williams syndrome. It is argued that very subtle differences in developmental timing, neuronal density, neuronal efficiency, firing thresholds, transmitter types, synaptogenesis and pruning, may have crucial but very indirect effects on the resulting phenotypes, affecting certain systems more than others. Subtle differences at a much lower level than cognitive modules are likely to explain the range of phenotypical outcomes that humans can display.     

Functional integration and the mind

Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general theoretical framework, based on generative models, that may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions.     

Theoretic Note: The Relation of Embryology to Linguistic and Cognitive Process

This paper is a conceptual essay that views the unfolding or individuation from the ovum to mind/brain form and process as the outcome of a unitary highly conserved pattern of epigenetic growth. The principle question concerns the extent to which the cognitive process can be understood as an extension or replication of primordial trends in the growth of organism. There are several lines of embryological study, some with a clear relation to cognitive process, others perhaps merely analogous, but there are sufficient data to support the claim that fundamental patterns in development recur in a momentary act of thought or perception. Indeed, the Bauplan that accounts for brain maturation at the cellular level accounts for the generation of the mind/brain state in maturity. The specification of cells in fetal brain growth corresponds with the progressive individuation of psychic structures in the course of early development. Growth trends in epigenetic process that translate the genetic code to morphology and physiology persist in the brain or psyche as patterns of mental process. Psychic structure is temporal, not spatial, and the structure of the mind/brain is ongoing formative process, not the resultant stabilities. One can say that in the brain, morphology is the form that process takes early in development, while brain function is the form process takes once structure is relatively settled. Put otherwise, morphogenesis first lays down form as structure, then lays down form as function (see Goodwin in J Theor Biol 97:43–55, 1982). The structure of the mind/brain is not a circuit board that outputs function, but is a recurrent activity that actualizes in behavior. Cognition is a mode of growth that is carried over from embryonic to adult life.     

Neuroscience and Whitehead II: Process-Based Ontology of Brain

While neuroscience has made enormous progress in understanding the brain, the implications of these empirical findings for ontological questions in philosophy including the mind–body problem remain yet unclear. In the first paper, I discussed the model of brain that as implied and supported by the empirical data. This leads me now to the question of an empirically plausible ontology of brain. Therefore, the aim in this second paper is the ontological characterization of the brain in terms of a process-based ontology that avoids what Whitehead described as “simple location” and “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. The discussion of the model of the brain is complemented by developing a process-based ontological characterization of the brain. Specifically, as based on Whitehead, I argue that “simple location” of the brain as thing or object in time and space amounts to nothing but an abstraction rendering what Whitehead described as “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. Instead of describing the brain as static, non-temporal and isolated thing or object, I characterize the brain ontologically by dynamic, temporal, and relational processes. This leads me to a process-based ontology of brain which may be specified in spatiotemporal terms. Since the world’s larger spatiotemporal range or scale contains, e.g., nests, the smaller one of the brain, I characterize their ontological relationship by “spatiotemporal nestedness” and “spatiotemporal directedness”. Such spatiotemporal relationship between world and brain precludes the confusion between the world as whole and the brain as part, e.g., “mereological confusion”. I conclude that process-based or better, more specifically, spatiotemporal ontology of the brain and its relationship to the world may offer novel views on the question for the ontological relationship between mind and brain, e.g., the mind–brain problem, by converting or reformulating it as “world-brain problem”.     

Atypical epigenesis

It is becoming increasingly clear that little in development is predetermined or permanently fixed. Rather, gene expression is activity dependent, and epigenesis is probabilistic. So, the study of genetic disorders needs to change from the still widely held view that developmental disorders can be accounted for in terms of intact versus impaired modules, to one which takes serious account of the fact that the infant cortex passes from an initial state of high regional interconnectivity to a subsequent state of increasing specialization and localization of function. With such early interconnectivity in mind, developmental neuroscientists must consider the possibility that an early deficit in one part of the brain may have subtle effects on other parts of the developing brain, even when scores fall 'in the normal range'. In studying developmental disorders, it is thus crucial to examine not only domains of clear-cut deficit, but also domains of behavioural proficiency. Atypical epigenesis may often involve a lack of specialization and localization of brain function over developmental time, even in cases of behavioural proficiency.     

Busting Out: Predictive Brains,Embodied Minds,and the Puzzle of the Evidentiary Veil

Biological brains are increasingly cast as ‘prediction machines’: evolved organs whose core operating principle is to learn about the world by trying to predict their own patterns of sensory stimulation. This, some argue, should lead us to embrace a brain‐bound ‘neurocentric’ vision of the mind. The mind, such views suggest, consists entirely in the skull‐bound activity of the predictive brain. In this paper I reject the inference from predictive brains to skull‐bound minds. Predictive brains, I hope to show, can be apt participants in larger cognitive circuits. The path is thus cleared for a new synthesis in which predictive brains act as entry‐points for ‘extended minds’, and embodiment and action contribute constitutively to knowing contact with the world.     

心理理论的遗传基础初探

心理理论在社会交往中起着关键作用,其认知过程包括对自我和他人的心理状态进行推断及预测下一步行为.心理理论在不同个体间具有差异,这种差异可能部分归因于与心理理论相关的神经化学物质如多巴胺、五羟色胺、催产素、血管加压素等.来自不同群体的研究结果还发现,与这些神经化学物质有关的基因多态性,如儿茶酚胺氧位甲基转移酶、多巴胺D4受体基因、5-羟色胺受体基因、催产素受体基因等都与心理理论的表现有关.     

从心理理论的脑机制研究看心理理论与执行功能的关系

心理理论发展与执行功能的关系以及心理理论脑机制的研究是近年来心理理论研究中的一个热点。文章首先对心理理论与执行功能关系的研究现状进行了分析与概括,提出了目前研究中的问题;然后从介绍了心理理论脑机制研究现状,并以此为基础探讨了心理理论与执行功能的关系。     

Quantum No-Go Theorems and Consciousness

Our conscious minds exist in the Universe, therefore they should be identified with physical states that are subject to physical laws. In classical theories of mind, the mental states are identified with brain states that satisfy the deterministic laws of classical mechanics. This approach, however, leads to insurmountable paradoxes such as epiphenomenal minds and illusionary free will. Alternatively, one may identify mental states with quantum states realized within the brain and try to resolve the above paradoxes using the standard Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics. In this essay, we first show that identification of mind states with quantum states within the brain is biologically feasible, and then elaborating on the mathematical proofs of two quantum mechanical no-go theorems, we explain why quantum theory might have profound implications for the scientific understanding of one’s mental states, self identity, beliefs and free will.     

What Are the Brain Mechanisms on Which Psychological Processes Are Based?

ABSTRACT— That the human brain is the organ of the mind is not in dispute, but we know remarkably little about the brain mechanisms underlying the mind. What are the functional structures and computational processes of the human brain that subserve cognition, emotion, and behavior? Given the complexity of the human brain, progress in understanding the functional organization and structure of the human brain depends on sophisticated theoretical specifications of the psychological representations and processes that differentiate two or more comparison conditions. Psychological scientists, therefore, are well positioned to lead the search for brain mechanisms underlying psychological processes. Doing so constitutes an expansion of the purview of psychological science beyond a science of behavior, and beyond a science of the mind, to include a science of the brain. Such an expansion of the mission of psychological science has implications for the infrastructure and training needs of the discipline.     

Cognitive deficits in developmental disorders

The existence of specific developmental disorders such as dyslexia and autism raises interesting issues about the structure of the normally developing mind. In these disorders distinct cognitive deficits can explain a range of behavioural impairments and have the potential to be linked to specific brain abnormalities. One possibility is that there are specific mechanisms dedicated to particular types of information processing. These mechanisms may function independently of more general information processing systems and may have a distinct anatomical basis in the brain.     

NEUROTHEOLOGY: THE WORKING BRAIN AND THE WORK OF THEOLOGY

Abstract. Because the mind is the significance of the brain and God is the significance of the mind, the concept "mind" bridges how the brain works and traditional patterns of belief. The left mind, which utilizes rational vigilance and the imperative instructions of proclamation, names and analyzes the urgently right. The right mind, which discloses the relational responsiveness of numinous presence and natural symbolism, is immersed in and integrates the ultimately real. Together they provide a typology of mind-states with which to assess regressive, functional, and creative patterns. Hand dominance, gender differences, and cultural bias qualify the use of the metaphor.     

Imagination as laboratory

The theme, 'Science and the Symbolic', may be approached via either concept. From one side, we may track how imagination, fantasy, and even dreams have initiated scientific theory and lines of research. From the other, we may look to the mythopoeic musings of the human mind for themes of proto-science and/or proto-psychology, and attempt to discern if they follow a method which may be called scientific. Neuroscientists such as Edelman and Llinas honour imagination as the carrier of emergent properties, and depth psychoanalysts see it as a vector toward actualization. What mind imagines through what the alchemists termed 'true imagination' may eventually be realized through what brain and body may conceive and execute.     

Waves,streams, states,and self: An outline of an integral psychology 1

Abstract

Although far from unanimous, there seems to be a general consensus that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. This essay argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a nonreductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness. In order to facilitate such integration, this essay presents the results of an extensive cross‐cultural literature search on the “mind” side of the equation, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self‐system). A “master template” of these various phenomena, culled from over one‐hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the “mind” side of the brain‐mind integration. The essay concludes with reflections on the “hard problem,” or how the mind‐side can be integrated with the brain‐side to generate a more integral theory of consciousness.     

What philosophy of mind can tell us about the morality of abortion: personhood, materialism, and the existence of self

I attempt to show that, under materialist assumptions about the nature of mind, it is a necessary condition for fetal personhood that electrical activity has begun in the brain. First, I argue that it is a necessary condition for a thing to be a moral person that it is (or has) a self--understood as something that is capable of serving as the subject of a mental experience. Second, I argue that it is a necessary condition for a fetus to be (or have) a self that some form of electrical brain activity occurs. Third, I argue that since the beginning of brain activity typically occurs at around 10 weeks of gestational age, most fetuses are not persons during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and hence that abortion of most fetuses during this period does not rise to the moral level of murder.     

The Creative Brain/The Creative Mind

In the past few decades, neuroscience research has greatly expanded our understanding of how the human brain functions. In particular, we have begun to explore the basis of emotions, intelligence, and creativity. These brain functions also have been applied to various aspects of behavior, thought, and experience. We have also begun to develop an understanding of how the brain and mind work during aesthetic and religious experiences. Studies on these topics have included neuropsychological tests, physiological measures, and brain imaging. These different techniques have enabled us to open up a window into the brain. It is by understanding the functioning of the creative brain that we begin to understand the concept of the creative mind. It is through the use of emotions and other higher cognitive functions that the brain and mind can create ideas, music, literature, and ultimately our entire repertoire of behaviors. How these different creative abilities are derived can also be traced to various parts of the brain and how they function. Modern neuroscience allows us to begin to understand the creative aspect of the brain and mind and perhaps can take us one step further toward understanding the most profound types of aesthetic and religious experiences.