Sublime

Ultimately, he says, neuroscience will—and should—dictate human values.

prefrontal cortex. For example, the side of this region is crucial for how we pay attention; it enables us to put things in the “front of our mind” and hold them in awareness. The middle portion of the prefrontal area, the part damaged in Barbara, coordinates an astonishing number of essential skills, including regulating the body, attuning to

This singular anatomical structure, composed entirely of organic compounds and locked for a lifetime in the darkness of the skull, makes possible everything we value about life.

Neurons in the striatum contribute to the production of behaviour by associating sensory inputs with actions or actions with other actions.

Dennett argues that the mind is just the brain and the brain is nothing but computation, unconscious all the way down. What we experience as introspection is merely an illusion, a made-up story that causes us to think we have “privileged access” to our thinking processes. But this illusion has no real connection to the mechanics of thought, and no

Ultimately, then, we could say the mission of the brain is this: control.

For example, the fact that a positron-emission tomography (PET) scan can identify the areas of the brain that are activated when a person is manifesting anger is not helpful in determining the source of the anger, particularly if unconscious processes are involved. Such findings are extremely interesting but of little use if one is trying to help a

most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind.