Brain & Mind

What is mind? The old gag answer, "No matter," is not good enough for medical science, but the experts still have a tough time explaining what little they know-of the relationship between mind and brain. Sir Russell Brain, one of Britain's top specialists in the workings of the nervous system, tackled the subject in a lecture at Cambridge University, which is published as The Contribution of Medicine to Our Idea of Mind (Cambridge University Press). He begins with a disclaimer and a definition: "I speak of the mind quite openly and unashamedly, not being one of those philosophers who make their living by expounding the nonexistence of their own minds . . . I shall assume that you know what I mean when I say that thinking, remembering, imagining, willing, feeling emotions and experiencing sensations are the kind of activities we describe as mental."

Soaring. Though he shies away from any attempt to define precisely and positively what mind is, Sir Russell has no hesitation in saying that it is something more than grey matter: "Though it is linked through the brain to the world of matter, it moves in its own sphere as though it could soar above the physical."

For a century, says Sir Russell, doctors have been studying how disease in the brain affects the mind, and some of the results have been surprising. Example: "We might have found that the mind behaved as something homogeneous, and that damage to the brain in any part merely made the mind generally less efficient, but that is not the case. The brain has a highly complex structure and so has the mind, and we are discovering by degrees what is the relationship between brain structure and mind structure."

While the brain is roughly compartmented for distinct types of work (e.g., emotional, intellectual), there is no sharp division between brain processes which accompany conscious and unconscious mental activity, said Sir Russell. "Mind, therefore . . . cannot . . . be identified with consciousness, or to put the same thing another way, there are large and important parts of the brain which are concerned with . . . solving problems while we sleep, making jokes, creating the characters who people our dreams, and contributing that vital element which we call inspiration to the work of the artist, poet and novelist."

Curtain Call. Neurologist Brain refused to try to adjudicate between physical and psychological explanations of mental states. But he could not resist a dig at the extreme Freudians: "You will recall the moving end of Peer Gynt, where Peer finds Solveig . . . and realizes that she is both wife and mother . . . If, as the curtain falls, a psychoanalyst in the seat behind you whispers: 'Oedipus complex!', do you understand the play better or enjoy it more?"

Medicine, said Sir Russell, may have to be scientific and therefore analytical, but it must also be an art. And the art of medicine, insisted Scientist Brain, must never lose sight of the fact that man is more than the sum of his parts.

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