• Question: where does thinking take place in the human brain? and where is the mind located?

    Asked by emmaa12 to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      A long time ago the Greeks actually believed the mind was located in the heart! Since they understood that this was the part of the body that meant the person died if it stopped working. Nowadays we tend to think of the brain as the seat of the mind, and our thoughts take place here as part of the communication between the millions of brain cells (neurons).

      Thinking takes place all over the brain but specific thoughts happen in specific places. For example, if you wanted to move your thinking would happen on either side of your brain about half-way back at the top – the movement areas. Or if you were thinking about what you were looking at then you’d be thinking with the very back of your brain, the visual area, just above the neck!

    • Photo: James Stovold

      James Stovold answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Hi emmaa12,

      There are many different theories of where the `mind’ is located — as Jen mentioned, the Greeks originally thought it was in the heart, there are also those that believe it is part of your `soul’ (although that sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me!). There are theories that suggest it is like the software running on the brain’s hardware (so, like a computer program running on top of a computer), but this would suggest you could filter the mind off and replace it with a different one.

      Personally, I believe in a different theory, which is that the mind is emergent from the interactions in the brain. The idea of emergence is that small interactions between simple elements can give rise to complex behaviour — think of a whirlpool in a body of water: the water molecules that make up the whirlpool are always changing, they flow in one side and out the other, but when you take a step back, the whirlpool is still there. What can we say `makes’ this whirlpool? It’s the same problem with the mind, we know the basic elements of the brain, we know how they interact, but we can’t pin down exactly what makes the mind a `mind’. One of the few ways we have to test these theories is to build computer models or to embody models of the brain into robots and see if they can develop a form of `mind’ between them. If they can, then we know we’re on the right lines!

      Hope that helps 🙂

      James

    • Photo: Michael Craig

      Michael Craig answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Good question. The ability to think is fascinating and we think it involves a lot of the brain and many complex processes which we don’t really understand. Recent research has shown that self-awareness which is a vital part of our thoughts activates the insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex areas of the brain. It’s a very interesting area of research that we might never understand fully!

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