A Beautiful Mind

Introduction In 1628, William Harvey, an English physician, discovered the true nature of the body circulatory system and identified the heart as a muscular pump. This ran counter to a belief that had held 2000 years: that the heart was home to intellect. Only in the late 18th century did scientist begin to realise the importance of the brain.

Cogito, ergo sum I think, therefore I am is a philosophical statement used by René Descartes . “But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (AT VII 25; CSM II 16–17)”

Simple Minds The sea slug, Aplysia, is capable of habituation and sensitization even though it only possesses a 5000 neurons. The eye of the frog contains cells that only fire in response to small erratically moving dark spots. On the other hand, only thin, elongated and moving lengthways will trigger a toad hunting behavior. The herring gull chicks will only respond to the red spot on the adult’s beak. The throat of the cuckoo chick is a super-stimulus for the release of the adult’s feeding behaviour.

Simple Minds: Human Beings Our visual systems can recognize species members and their genders irrespective of facial features, hair or clothes, and with minimal information about body shape. Men swing their shoulders when trying to emphasize their masculinity, and women swing their hips when signaling their femininity. These are unconscious attempts to become a super-stimulus for gender recognition.

Emotional “Left and Right” The RH plays a bigger role than LH in judging the emotional tone of voices. The LH seems connected with more positive emotions then is the RH. People with LH damage tend to develop depression, whereas those with RH damage prone to manic cheerfulness. RH plays a greater role in face recognition than LH.

Idiot Savant Idiot savants have highly refined and efficient form of memory with which they can visualise paintings or a range of dates, or memorise a tune. These skills can be present from birth or acquired after an injury to or disease of the central nervous system. The condition can be caused by genetic abnormalities, sensory isolation, or defects in brain areas and structures that can carry out intellectual tasks, such as hippocampus (a structure directly linked to sensory inputs and memory.

Night Terrors Night terrors are sudden arousals from sleep with accompanying symptoms of deep anxiety. The term used to describe these unconsciousness actions is ‘automatisms’, meaning actions performed without the realisation that they are taking place.

Out of Body Experience An out-of-body experience (OBE), is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body . About one in ten people has reported having an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives Attempting to fall asleep without losing wakefulness is generally believed to be what causes involuntary OBEs. Inventor Thomas Edison was known to use the sleep state to tackle problems while working on his inventions. He would hold a rock above a metal bucket while sitting in a chair, and let himself fall asleep. This would cause the rock to fall into the bucket and wake him up. Deliberately teetering between awake and asleep states is known to cause spontaneous trance episodes at the onset of sleep which are ultimately helpful when attempting to induce an out-of-body experience.

Complex Minds and Computers In 1950, the father of AI, Alan Turing has prophesied that by the end twentieth century computers would be able to hold a five- minute conversation with humans, and fool 30% of them into believing that they are dealing with another human being.

In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT unveiled Eliza, a computer programmed to give responses like those expected from psychotherapist. Weizenbaum noted, “Extremely short exposures to relatively simple computer program causes powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov, the greatest human chess player in history.