Conscious mind and brain plasticity

• Grant number: 15/20004-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 01, 2016
• End date: January 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
• Grantee: Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
• Host Investigator: Patricia Smith Churchland
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura, Artes e Comunicação (FAAC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), United States

Abstract

Interpreting results of neuroscientific research, I am assuming a "double face view" of mind-brain relationship. First, I am considering the conscious mind as brain, what means that the structural and functional organization of the brain is the cause not just of the existence, but also of the properties - form and content - of the conscious mind. Second, I am considering the brain as conscious mind, what means that the conscious mind is, together with biological and physical properties, responsible for the structural and functional organization of the brain. This approach of the relationship between conscious mind and brain does not imply an undervaluation of the body and the physical and sociocultural environment in which the conscious brain is embodied and situated. Related to the first face, there are countless studies, most of them published in the last 30 years, which use different methods of research and technologies that allow peer the normal and abnormal brain during and after cognitive, affective and behavioral tasks, which indicates the conscious mind dependence on the brain. This sort of research has fostered the development of therapeutic practices targeting cognitive, affective and behavioral dysfunctions, which consist in manipulating brain - chemically and electromagnetically, for example - changing its structure and functioning on both levels, macrophysical and microphysical. Related to the second face, contemporary research in neuroscience allows infer that the brain, besides being physically embodied and situated, is also consciously embodied and situated. It means that, via conscious mind, though not exclusively, the brain interacts with its body and with the physical and the sociocultural environment in which it is immersed. I am assuming that what the brain is and what the brain does is inseparable from its structural and functional architecture, genetically programmed and, as studies of brain plasticity show, resultant of brain interactions with the physical and sociocultural environment, which affects the brain thanks to the brain ability to interact with the external world via its conscious mind. Regarding this aspect, the contemporary neuroscience has shown that the brain is not only modified when it is physically altered by sensory stimuli, by injury, surgery, chemical and electromagnetic manipulation, etc., but also, thanks to its plasticity, by many different kinds of physical and psychological experiences. By exposure to sociocultural practices, such as those related to a regular education, a child, thanks to the her conscious mind, has its brain modified, that is, the sociocultural learning is not separated from what happens in the brain. As shows a paradigmatic definition of brain plasticity, there is an essential relationship between brain changes and experience. What neuroscientists in general do not specify, but I am considering as fundamental, is that what is said about experience changing the brain could be interpreted, at least in many cases, as conscious experience. So, I am especially interested in studying the relationship between conscious experiences and brain plasticity, in special, how it operates in formal and sociocultural learning. (AU)