What do souls do

However, this is not to say that self resides in the prefrontal cortex. Rather, the new structure allows a more complex coordination of what is anatomically a sensori-motor machine.

He used the terms lowest, middle, and highest centres…as proper names…to indicate evolutionary levels. Ascending levels show increasing integration and coordination of sensorimotor representations. The highest-level coordination, which allows the greatest voluntary control, depends on prefrontal activity. Self is a manifestation of this highest level of consciousness, which involves doubling. This doubling is established by the reflective capacity that enables one to become aware of individual experience in a way that gives a sense of an inner life.

Sherrington addressed function and emphasised the limitations of our means for analysis:. The physico-chemical produced a unified machine… the psychical, creates from psychical data a percipient, thinking and endeavouring mental individual… they are largely complemental and life brings them co-operatively together at innumerable points… The formal dichotomy of the individual … which our description practiced for the sake of analysis, results in artifacts such as are not in nature… the two schematic members of the puppet pair… require to be integrated… This integration can be thought of as the last and final integration.

Impenetrable, Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched, Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure, Invisible, ineffable, by word And thought uncompassed, ever all itself, Thus is the Soul declared! Arnold, Socrates — Now do you think one can acquire any particular knowledge of the nature of the soul without knowing the nature of the whole man? Phaedrus — If Hippocrates the Asclepiad is to be trusted, one cannot know the nature of the body, either, except in that way.

I was being mischievous. Where is it? The search for the location of the human soul probably dates back to the awareness of such an entity. Termed atman by ancient Indian philosophers, psyche by the Greek and anima by the Romans, it has been considered resident within, but distinct from the human body. Many consider it immortal, postulating death to be the consequence of the departure of the soul from the body.

Several questions arise when considering the soul. Here are some examples. When does the soul enter the human body, as the sperm enters the egg or as they fuse into one cell or at a later stage? Does the soul influence the body, mind and intellect? Is the soul identical with what we term conscience? What happens to the soul during dreams, anaesthesia, trance-like states? What happens to it after the soul leaves the body? Where and how are acquired characters stored in the nebulous soul?

Where, in the body, does the soul reside? The answer must be in a resounding affirmative. The efforts over millennia to determine the nature and discover the location of the soul have resulted in a better understanding of the wonderful structure and function of man and his place in the cosmos.

And if one knows how great is the likeness between bodily and mental diseases, and that both are treated by the same remedies, one cannot help refusing to separate the soul from the body.

Chekhov echoes the question asked by so many over the centuries. Hippocrates concluded that madness originated in the brain. Plato in Timaeus felt that folly was a disease of the soul.

Philistion subclassified folly into madness and ignorance Harris, Pythagoras c. The seat of the soul extended from the heart to the brain, passion being located in the heart and reason and intelligence in the brain Prioreschi, Leonardo da Vinci —; see Figure 2 , with his uncanny genius, placed the soul above the optic chiasm in the region of the anterior-inferior third ventricle Santoro et al.

Leonardo depicted the location of the soul at the point where a series of intersecting lines meet Santoro, Though human ingenuity by various inventions with different instruments yields the same end, it will never devise an invention either more beautiful… than does Nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing superfluous and she… puts there the soul, the composer of the body, that is the soul of the mother which first composes in the womb the shape of man and in due time awakens the soul which is to be its inhabitant Del Maestro, There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.

And the faculties of willing, feeling, conceiving, etc. But it is quite otherwise with corporeal or extended objects, for there is not one of them imaginable by me which my mind cannot easily divide into parts. Descartes localised the soul in the pineal gland as it lay deep within the brain, in the midline and was unpaired [see Figure 4 ]. The pineal gland according to Descartes. Lancisi — agreed that the soul must lie deep within the brain, in the midline and in an unpaired structure, but favoured the corpus callosum, especially the Nervali longitudinales ab anterioribus ad posteriora excurrentes , which are still called the medial longitudinal striae of corpus callosum, or nerves of Lancisi.

He felt that the vital spirits could flow in the fibres of the medial striae. These formed a pathway for the stream of the soul or perhaps consciousness between the anterior part of the corpus callosum and the anterior columns of the fornix and the posterior part of the corpus callosum and the thalami, a sort of connection between the seat of the soul and the peripheral organs, between the soul and the body Di Ieva, Thomas Willis wrote Cerebri Anatome while being a Professor of Natural Philosophy in Oxford, where he used the anatomy of the brain as a tool to investigate the nature of the soul.

Albrecht von Haller — placed the soul in the medulla oblongata Trimble, ; p Bloom commented on the refutation of the dualist view differentiating the body and the soul:. But the question is not really about life in any biological sense. It is instead asking about the magical moment at which a cluster of cells becomes more than a mere physical thing. It is a question about the soul… It is not a question that scientists could ever answer.

The qualities of mental life that we associate with souls are purely corporeal; they emerge from biochemical processes in the brain…. Santoro et al. They concluded that there exist two dominant and, in many respects, incompatible concepts of the soul: one that understands the soul to be spiritual and immortal, and another that understands the soul to be material and mortal. In both cases, the soul has been described as being located in a specific organ or anatomic structure or as pervading the entire body, and, in some instances, beyond mankind and even beyond the cosmos.

Rationalists are doubtful. What do you mean by soul? The brain? Is there not something immortal of or in the human brain — the human mind? Because we do not know what that power is, shall we call it immortal? As well call electricity immortal because we do not know what it is… After death the force or power undoubtedly endures, but it endures in this world, not in the next. And so with the thing we call life, or the soul — mere speculative terms for a material thing which under given conditions drives this way or that.

It too endures in this world, not the other. Because we are as yet unable to understand it, we call it immortal. In , Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts, decided to weigh the soul by weighing a human being in the act of death. It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted.

He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat. During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar in order to make the test more decisive if it should come. At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound.

The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce. It is the belief that when the heart stops beating the soul leaves the body. Something may be learned of the soul by observing the changes in its habitat, the marrow-like brain, at the moment when life ceases.

I myself do not believe the soul to be a thing without the brain though I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic. Otto Rank has summed the situation regards the soul well. He felt that belief in the soul grew out of the need to reassure ourselves of immortality, despite our knowledge of the immutable biological fact of death:.

Ramachandran, brain scientist at the University of California, San Diego, is less tactful. For scientists who are people of faith, like Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, asking about the science of the soul is pointless, in a way, because it is not a subject science can address. If we accept the existence of the soul and its localisation in the brain, we must focus on the brainstem.

Christopher Pallis , discussing the definition of whole-brain death, provided a modern concept of the soul. We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of soul. Perhaps, we shall eventually come to conclusions similar to those reached by Sir Thomas Browne 19 October, —19 October, in his most famous work, the Religio Medici :. The mind and the soul remain fascinating enigmas. Whilst we have made some progress in our understanding of these two hazy constituents of life, much is as yet poorly understood.

Religious scholars ask us scientists to desist from any attempt at studying the soul. Hindu philosophers tell us that the soul of a person who has attained moksha liberation from the cycle of re-birth unites with God.

The soul has often been termed the God within each of us. The spirit of enquiry that is the essence of science must stimulate us to continue our efforts at understanding it better. If, in doing so, we understand God better, this can only be to our advantage. The study of the brain, mind and soul has engaged some of the finest intellects of yesteryears. It remains an ennobling and inspiring pursuit, worthy of all those who are dedicated votaries of science. Which of the many modern tools used in the study of the brain should we use to further our understanding of the mind?

Philosophers have argued that the soul is not amenable to scientific scrutiny. Accepting this point of view, would mean an end to any serious exploration of this hitherto nebulous entity. What studies can we undertake to advance our knowledge and understanding?

Sunil Pandya is a neurosurgeon and thinker on medical ethics. He retired on superannuating in , and has since worked at the Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai. I am grateful to Dr. Shakuntala and Dr. Ajai Singh for stimulating me to study this subject in greater detail. The adequate time provided by them between the invitation to participate in that very stimulating meeting and the event itself enabled me to consult books and journals and works available on the internet and put together this essay.

Ajai Singh has also kindly made important suggestions for the improvement of my essay and helped in its writing and editing. Conflict of interest. An earlier version was also published in the Proceedings of the Seminar. This paper is my original writing, and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. Singh and S. Singh eds. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Mens Sana Monogr v. Mens Sana Monogr. Sunil K. Find articles by Sunil K.

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Address correspondence to: Dr.

Email: moc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Treatment of diseases of the brain by drugs or surgery necessitates an understanding of its structure and functions.

Introduction Millennia ago, we embarked on a quest for knowledge of the wonderful structure of man. Similar abnormalities also follow chemical derangements in the brain. The Mind We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies, or, if you will, embodied minds and minded bodies. Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Where is the Mind Located? How does the Mind Function? Two great British masters of neurology summed it up best. John Hughlings Jackson 4 March, —7 October, addressed anatomy.

Is there any point in searching for the location of the soul? Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. If there be a soul, where is it located? Views of neuroscientists If we accept the existence of the soul and its localisation in the brain, we must focus on the brainstem. Concluding Remarks [see also Figure 5 ]. Figure 5. Take home message The study of the brain, mind and soul has engaged some of the finest intellects of yesteryears.

About the Author Sunil Pandya is a neurosurgeon and thinker on medical ethics. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Dr. Footnotes Conflict of interest None declared. References 1. Chapter 4. Apuzzo M. Aristotle On the soul. Arnold E. New York: Truslove, Hanson and Comba; Baff M. The New York Times Magazine. September 4, , Sunday. Barker F. J Neurosurg. Bloom P. Blumer D, Benson D. Personality changes with frontal and temporal lobe lesions. In: Benson D, Blumer D, editors. Psychiatric Aspects of Neurologic Disease.

New York: Grune and Stratton; Breathnach C. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Browne T. Carey B. The New York Times. Carter R. Mapping the mind. Berkeley: University of California Press; Dean C. Science of the Soul? Del Maestro Rolando F. Leonardo da Vinci: the search for the soul. The Journal of Neurosurgery.

Feindel W. In: Philosophy of Neurological Surgery. Issam Awad. In: History of Neurology, Handbook of Clinical Neurology. Amsterdam: Elsevier; Greenfield S.

The human brain. A guided tour. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; Gross R. Psychology: the science of mind and behaviour. London: Hodder Arnold H and S; P, Tomasello F. The anatomic location of the soul from the heart, through the brain to the whole body, and beyond: a journey through Western history, science, and philosophy.

Hamilton C. Citing the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, Polkinghorne said, "I think that's a mistake," adding, "We have psychosomatic unity. We're not 'apprentice angels'; we're embodied human beings. In fact, it's quite difficult to understand what's the carrier of continuity for a person in this life. Here am I, an aging, balding academic — what makes me the same person as the little boy with the shock of black hair in the school photograph of years ago?

It's not atomic material continuity — the atoms in my body are totally different from the atoms in that schoolboy. It's not the atoms themselves, but the pattern in which those atoms are organized in some extraordinary, elaborate and complex sense.

And I think that's what the human 'soul' is. It is the information-bearing pattern that is the real me. So if I am truly to live again, I have to be re-embodied, because that's what I am as a human being. That's the continuity side of things. The discontinuity is that I'm not made alive again in order to die again, so I must be embodied in some new form of matter. And it's perfectly coherent to believe that God can bring into being such a new form of matter.

To Swinburne, the idea of our afterlife existence existing in a renewed instantiation of the pattern of information that we had on Earth is problematic. But because only one of them could be me, a pattern of information provides no extra criterion for distinguishing which one that would be. And whatever the extra criterion is, it would have to be such that there [logically] could only be one instance of it at one time.

And if we have such a criterion, then what need is there for the pattern of information to be the same as a previous pattern? Philosopher John Leslie, a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada, stated that robust selfhood may require a kind of "existential unity," a state "as found in wholes whose parts are incapable of separate existence. Leslie likens this existential unit to the holistic conscious experience of a painting or of several successive musical notes heard together.

Though "existential," this unity of the self is real; it "may depend on the fact that particular states of a brain, and also successive states of that brain and their linkages over a lifetime, possess this existential unity.

How could such existential unity be achieved? The brain could be a kind of quantum computer. Even so, he added, "the brain carrying out quantum computing isn't essential to my position, and something other than quantum unity could be involved.

Leslie drew an analogy with a historical understanding of souls. It was believed simply that souls had, from the moment of their creation by God, the property of being complex yet existentially unified. Many distinguishable elements of such complexity were present when a soul had a thought or an experience, but still, a soul remained existentially unified at each instant and remained the very same soul at successive instants.

To conclude this four-part series on the self, I gather, categorize and assess all putative explanations for your "self. Next in this four-part series: What Is a 'Self'?

Here Are All the Possibilities. Read more of Kuhn's essays on Kuhn's Space. Live Science.