There is no doubt that the brain and the conscious mind interact.
(snoop, I think you might disagree with that statement as many folk believe that the mind is just the result of the complexity of the human brain and that the mind cant exist apart from the brain.)
Brain damage can cause loss of some functions of consciousness. Amnesia after a head injury or poor memory due to aging are two examples. Brain tumors, injuries to the brain, mental illnesses, other diseases like rabies, and even puberty all influence behavior. Neurological activity can be measured and shown to be associated with mental activity. Nerve impulses from sensory organs result in brain activity, and the conscious mind has awareness of the sensations perceived. When the mind generates the impulse to move, nerve impulses are carried from the brain to the muscles to cause movement. Consciousness is affected by brain activity and it is able to influence brain activity. However
this is only a correlation, it is not proof that neurological activity causes consciousness.
In fact, there is no good reason to believe that consciousness is produced by the brain.
(snoop, many believe consciousness IS produced by the brain)
The brain is a physical system. It is made of atoms that behave according to the known laws of physics. The brain is no more than a mechanical machine or an electronic computer. The reason such devices are*not capable of being conscious*is explained in more detail below. But consider a simple machine or a simple computer. No one would say such a device is conscious. However, because the brain is a very complicated system, some materialists will state that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. This is a fallacy and is also*dealt with in more detail below. Calling consciousness an emergent property doesn't really explain how the brain could produce consciousness, it is just a fancy of saying materialism can't explain it.
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The correlation between consciousness and brain activity should also exist if the brain is an interface between a nonphysical mind and the physical body.
One way to think of this is that the brain is like a filter of consciousness
. This is called the filter model of the brain.
In the filter model, consciousness is a nonphysical phenomena and the brain filters consciousness while we are incarnated in our physical bodies. The brain could filter some aspects of consciousness the way a colored glass can filter out some wavelengths of light. What passes through the brain filter is a restricted set of conscious faculties that we have while in the physical body.
The filter model is superior to the hypothesis that the brain produces consciousness because the filter model explains more evidence.
You can damage a filter in two ways. You can clog it or you can
punch a hole in it. When brain damage causes loss of function like amnesia, that is like a clog in the filter. When brain injury results in
increased function, (snoop, like dream remote viewing, precognitive dreams, mutual dreaming and dream to waking-life synchronicities)
that is like a hole punched in the filter. Examples of increased function include*Acquired Savant Syndrome*and when people have increased psychic abilities after a brain injury.
In the filter model one of the functions of the brain is to restrict consciousness. In that case, if you release the conscious mind from the brain as happens during a near death experience you should have expanded, unfiltered, consciousness. This is exactly what happens during a near death experience. People who have NDE's are able to perceive more than they do when in the body. They report seeing in 360 degrees and seeing colors that they do not see when in the body. Blind people report seeing during NDE's. Some near death experiencers report being able to communicate telepathically with other beings. Some report understanding that time is just an illusion or that they seem to have access to all the knowledge in the universe.
Restricting consciousness probably has some survival value. If a person had access to all the information in the universe about any time in the past, present or future, it might be difficult to concentrate on surviving here and now.
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