Sublime

Science knows surprisingly little about mind and consciousness. Current orthodoxy holds that consciousness is created by electrochemical reactions in the brain, and that mental experiences fulfill some essential data-processing function. However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical reactions and electrical currents in the brain

“We’re not machines. Our brain and our mind are fundamentally distinct, though they work together. The brain offers a third-person perspective; it’s the mind that provides a first-person experience.”

the subjective experience of being a conscious agent—for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons.

We all feel we are wonderfully unified, coherent mental machines and that our underlying brain structure must somehow reflect this overpowering sense we all possess.

At the beginning of the 1990’s, colleagues of mine in Parma, Italy, discovered some special brain cells they coined “mirror neurons,” which dramatically changed the way we look not only at the brain, but also our understanding of social interactions.

Crucial for understanding trauma, the frontal lobes are also the seat of empathy—our ability to “feel into” someone else. One of the truly sensational discoveries of modern neuroscience took place in 1994, when in a lucky accident a group of Italian scientists identified specialized cells in the cortex that came to be known as mirror neurons.8

This analytical, active part of our mind in the prefrontal cortex is physiologically expensive if it is not supported by the more primal regions of the brain that we associate with the unconscious mind. The function of the unconscious regions of the brain is known in cognitive science as “hot cognition” or “System 1.” Hot cognition is the function

Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?