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Week 1/2009: The mind is more than the brain

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“Thinking involves more than just the brain,” says head of research Riitta Hari of the Brain Research Unit at the Helsinki University of Technology. This phenomenon is traceable, for example, in scientific experiments that isolate the subjects from all stimuli: before long, their thoughts begin to circle. The mind does not equal the brain.

The human mind can differentiate and balance between reality and various worlds of fantasy. “Even children under school age know without doubt that Donald Duck cannot join in Batman’s adventures,” says docent Ilkka Pyysiäinen of the University of Helsinki.

The ability to analyze and classify products of the imagination without disconnecting from reality is among the most important functions of the mind. Schizophrenia causes these hierarchies of beliefs to collapse.

Paying attention to external symptoms is the only way to diagnose a shaken mind, according to Professor Emeritus Johannes Lehtonen of the University of Kuopio. A mentally unsound person has constrained communication abilities, which makes it even more difficult to fathom the mind.

“In clinical work, it is enlightening and rewarding to hear from those recovered from psychosis how they gradually regained a sense of reality. The line between sanity and insanity is thin. Paranoid delusions always include a few drops of logic, and we all enter psychosis every night when we dream,” Lehtonen explains.

The exchange of thoughts at the final seminar of the Mind Forum made for captivating listening at the University of Helsinki on November 20. Funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, this two-year project was established to bring together neuroscientists, doctors, and experts in the arts and humanities to discuss the human mind, free of the pressure to produce research results.

Text: Maaria Ylänkö
Picture: Veikko Somerpuro
Translation: AAC Noodi
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