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Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul
    #4247258 -

The brain is composed of two hemispheres. Each is good at processing information in different ways, and most people preferentially exhibit the personality characteristics of one side or the other. The left brain controls the right half of the body, and right brain controls the left.

The left brain is described using words as: logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, looks at parts. The right brain is described using words as: random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, subjective, looks at wholes.

There is a structure in the center of the brain (see pic below) called the Corpus Callosum. It is a broad, thick mass of nerves connecting the cerebral hemispheres. This is the 'ethernet' connection between the two sides of the brain. The CC integrates the two hemispheres into one unit of personality, memory, and stimulus/response behavior.

Click to enlarge:


Severing the CC is a controversial surgery used to control violent, medically intractable, multifocal epilepsy. During the procedure, the surgeon opens the skull, lays back the brain's coverings and, with a tool called a cerebral retractor, exposes the corpus callosum. He then snips the structure in two and completes the procedure.

When the patient recovers, his personality is dissociated into two distinct psyches. The controversy around this procedure stems from the Jekyll and Hyde aura surrounding this side effect which is called the "Split Brain" syndrome.

The brain houses two separate realms of conscious awareness; two sensing, perceiving, thinking and remembering systems.  If a patient whose CC has been severed holds up something like a comb or a coffee cup in his left hand, he cannot speak its name. Transferred to the right hand -- no trouble at all. If a card with a printed word is held up in the patient's left field of view, he cannot read it, but when it's in his right field of view, he can.

If a person's psyche springs forth from a founding, ethereal soul, then why the drastic two-personality results of a severed CC?

Other symptoms include competitive movement between the two hands. When the patient holds something in the left hand, the right exhibits un-willed, but well-coordinated, repetitive reaching and groping at the hand holding the object.

Also seen in such patients is a loss of spontaneous speech since the manual dominance and speech centers are in opposite hemispheres. That's to say, when the mind in one hemisphere thinks of something to say, it has no way to communicate it to the other mind to cause the utterance.

The inability of right-handers to name or describe an object in the left hand, even when it is being appropriately manipulated (like holding a pencil properly) is another symptom.

Split brain subjects progressively acquire a variety of strategies for circumventing their interhemispheric transfer deficits. A common example is for the patient to speak out loud the name of an object palpated in the right hand; because the right hemisphere can recognize many individual words, the object can then be retrieved with the left hand.

Additional unrelated evidence for the idea that the brain is only a very powerful symbol processing machine is the fact that patients with damage to a structure called the Angular Gyrus cannot interpret metaphors; they can only comprehend the literal meaning of the words even when the metaphor is explained to them. All other language skills remain intact. If language was being communicated to a soul by the brain, then why the loss of only metaphors when the AG is damaged? The AG is also credited with the classical Out Of Body Experience.

More and more neurological evidence is found every day that the brain, the psyche, and consciousness are not mystical or metaphysical phenomena, but are actually just emergent properties of complex biology. How much more evidence must be provided by medical science before people will stop clinging to mystical or metaphysical explanations for consciousness that are not supported by the evidence?  :mushroom2:


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

Edited by Diploid (06/02/05 10:45 AM)

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247268 -

I don't understand why the left and right hand correlate to the left and right brain. That seems odd to me. Interesting post though. More and more we seem to be the result of complex physical interactions.

Neurology is the way to understand the human brain, and subsequently our mind and actions, NOT psychology.. but that a different thread I guess.


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I am in love with Acidic_Sloth


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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: looner2]
    #4247274 -

I don't understand why the left and right hand correlate to the left and right brain.

The nerves that drive right-body motor functions come only from the left hemisphere, and the other way around for the other side.

This is why people who experience a stroke are paralized on only one side of the body.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247277 -

Oh yeah didn't think of that.

For an experiment I held up my right hand and said first thing in my mind, "coffee cup" , and then put it in my left hand and held it up and said, "beautiful floral design". This proves that article correct! I'm such the scientist.


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I am in love with Acidic_Sloth


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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: looner2]
    #4247285 -

I think this co-relates to:

NLP

n : the branch of information science that deals with natural language information [syn: natural language processing, NLP, human language technology]


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Disclaimer!?

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247307 -

Thats a very nice thread diploid,especially for the ones versed in sciences that do not think that "shroud of mystery" covers every scientific set of data,but its product of studying,examining and pure logic.

Personally im not yet discrediting the presence of "soul" ,soul could be something more vital (read :what makes us tick) than a proccessing center such as the brain.After all what people name "soul" might not be the carrier of our intellectual properties ,since the brain is ,or an even more far fetched theory the brain could simply be the organ that somehow soul uses to declare its actions. IF we break the receiving/controlling apparatus ,malfunction is observed.

For the moment being though i fully trust the data you present because i have done my research on it and ended with the same info! SO why people continue this "paranormal" "metaphysical" explanations? Simply ,its a matter of emotion! However many evidence you will procure people will continue their "metaphysical journeys". They find it more "sacred" more "cool" more "real" if their OOBE is a matter of the "etheral" "immaterial" plane than one of purely biological origin.People believe in soul,after all they are gonna die,its cooler for them to think that something continues living after biological ceasation!

Personally i dont think that a biological explanation of OOBE dims the quality of what i am experiencing when im experiencing it.It makes me even more thrilled to find out that such phenomena are hardwired in my brain,that my perception and proccessing organ can produce such a magnificent array of effects! I think ,whatever the explanation,those sensations are one of a kind...Does it matter if they dont stem from etherial soul ?

As a snack:

Once in a forum dealing with Esoteric,Metaphysical and supernatural phenomena the subject of "astral projection" was discussed.Everyone of course jumped straight to metaphysical theories on it.I entered the thread and pinpointed data about the brain,which many felt that they treatened their "sacred hard-to-earn experience" and dismissed them.One of the best comments one gave me was a quotation from Nicolai Tesla that says "When science starts investigating the paranormal and the metaphysical,it would make progress of centuries within decades!"

To thich i responded : "Nicolai Tesla though was immensly knowledgable on Physics and on normal phenomena BEFORE he started investigating the unknown. So lets take his example : Before studying the meta-physics,the extra sensory perception and the para-normal lets first be masters of physics, sensory perception and the 'normal".

Needless to say,noone commented on my answer.


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Entheomation's SEED Ethical Vendor Project.Please support it if you value your plants!

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Psiloman]
    #4247329 -

I will venture a comment. ---Beatiful, right on, Yes!! :thumbup: :cool: :heart:


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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Icelander]
    #4247441 -

Sorry, but I don't get it... just because we can show that the brain has structures and those structures control different aspects of our behavior and perception does not mean that a person does or does not have a soul. It seems shallow at best to claim that something doesn't exist before defining what that something is. The author is assuming that if a soul exists, that it somehow imparts itself into our behavior and perception independently of the brain. What happens if the soul actually interfaces to the body through the brain... by tearing up the brain we mess with the interface between the soul and the body... and *gasp* we see the effects described above.

I see this type of horrid "pseudo-science" spouted by the creationists all the time. I guess it shouldn't surprise me to see such drivel spouted by the wanna-be scientists as well.


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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Seuss]
    #4247459 -

The author is assuming

I am the author.

It seems shallow at best to claim that something doesn't exist before defining what that something is.

I defined it in a roundabout way in the opening post, but more precisely, I define it, for purposes of this thread, as the metaphysical, incorporeal, ethereal origin of a person's psyche. How's that?

just because we can show that the brain has structures and those structures control different aspects of our behavior and perception does not mean that a person does or does not have a soul

My reasoning goes like this.

If the soul is where we exist, then it is where incoming language is interpreted and from where outgoing language is originated. Why, then, would damage to the Angular Gyrus cause the soul to lose ONLY the ability to interpret metaphors while all other language generating and interpreting abilities remain intact?

This tells me that the processing of metaphors is IN THE BRAIN, not in a soul because the words themselves, and the literal meaning of those words can still be interpreted by someone with damage to the AG. In other words, the words themselves must be making it ungarbled to the soul, so why the difficulty with the interpretation of metaphors? By extension of this, I conclude that the processing of language is also in the brain, and not in a soul, and if this is true, then why invent a soul to explain what, from all evidence, is simply a neurological function?

This doesn't prove there is no soul, but it sure gives the open mind something to think about...


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

Edited by Diploid (06/02/05 10:33 AM)

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247473 -

I knew all about that, did it all in Psychology!

Anyway, in response to your question...

Nothing can be proven, "there are no facts, only interpretations."


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"Whatever you do, you need to keep moving.  Because when you stop moving you die (physically and emotionally).

Good luck and blessings of happiness and fortune." ~ RandalFlagg RIP


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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: rogue_pixie]
    #4247508 -

I have stated this before, which is much like what Psiloman had to say: The brain is merely a communication device between soul and body. If we were to damage or rearrange any parts of the brain, we would inevitably have a communication problem. Many computers nowadays have dual caches and processing units which cooperate much like the two regions of our brain do (compared to your example). If we were to remove the ability for one cpu to communicate with its other cpu i am willing to bet some very similar problems would arise. more often than not, only one cpu would function at one time, instead of having the overlapping power and symbiotic function of both.

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: rogue_pixie]
    #4247519 -

The Truth is really inside each of you, amongst the chaos mentioned. Its odd that nobody has mentioned that a soul, the existence of a soul, could be the culminating energy that arises from living biology. Your consciousness! We have all let some one else define SOUL for us. I question their intentions. Confusion!? Now, if we inherently have two halves, as mentioned, then the joining of these as ONE could be called atonement. At-ONE-MENT. GOD. The holy trinity. The father, the son, the holy spirit. The other, or Truth, you and your truth, and the joining of the tow hemispheres or entities (holy spirit). AT ONE! Science still has a long way to come, in my opinion, to explain GOD. Like apples and oranges. Fruit anyway though, good try. haha. Just ideas.

Psyilly

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Seuss]
    #4247531 -

To thich i responded : "Nicolai Tesla though was immensly knowledgable on Physics and on normal phenomena BEFORE he started investigating the unknown. So lets take his example : Before studying the meta-physics,the extra sensory perception and the para-normal lets first be masters of physics, sensory perception and the 'normal".
____________________________________________________________________

Sorry for the confusion. :confused: I was saying yes to this part in particular.

I agree that we no nothing for sure, but we make a best guess on the best evidence we have. Scientific expermentation is one of the best tools we have. Still I'm not absolutely sure it can answer all questions?  :mushrooms


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247583 -

Quote:
If the soul is where we exist, then it is where incoming speech is interpreted and from where outgoing speech is originated. Why, then, would damage to the Angular Gyrus cause the soul to lose ONLY the ability to interpret metaphors while all other speech generating and interpreting abilities remain intact?


Diploid, when I read that, all it tells me is that the soul psyche no longer has the ability to express that aspect through the human physical form.

It doesn't mean the soul "lost" it.

We know you through your typed words. If your computer processor had a glitch that did not allow for the typed word "the" to process and it was missing from all of your posts, does it mean you lost the ability to use it when forming your sentence structures in your mind, or that that the medium you express yourself to us through lost its ability to process it and bring it through to us in your sentences?

Your logic is circular if you equate the soul psyche with originating in the brain itself.

Your assumption says the soul is where we exist yet your example is based on the brain being where we exist. If you kept with the assumption that soul is where we exist then you will not find proof for or against it in the brain.

Thats like trying to prove France doesn't exist working with a map of mars. France didn't originate from the planet mars and you won't find evidence of it there. Or a more accurate analogy would be like saying Bachs Piano concerto doesn't exist because you only have drums and guitars to bring the sound of a piano through. The sound of a piano doesn't originate from a drum or a guitar and you won't find evidence of it there.

In my view, brain is seen as a proccessor/medium for the soul to express itself through in this physical plane of existance.

If you think physical existance feeds the idea of soul then start to help neuro scientists explain savanat genious's. There is a man who can not tie his own shoes, but he can tell you what the day of the week any date on the calander will fall on. If he was asked, what day of the week is June 15th 3056, he could tell you on spot and be correct.

Thats not proof of a soul either.


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Ahuwale ka nane huna.

Edited by gettinjiggywithit (06/02/05 11:06 AM)

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #4247592 -

psilocyberin said:
If we were to remove the ability for one cpu to communicate with its other cpu i am willing to bet some very similar problems would arise. more often than not, only one cpu would function at one time, instead of having the overlapping power and symbiotic function of both.


None of which says anything of the existance of the fat-assed person sitting in a leather chair in front of the monitor of said computer. :grin: :lol: :thumbup:

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :satansmoking:
Peace. :mushroom2:


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:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Gomp]
    #4247596 -

""More and more neurological evidence is found every day that the brain, the psyche, and consciousness are not mystical or metaphysical phenomena, but are actually just emergent properties of complex biology.""

what would be the difference exactly?


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Disclaimer!?

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: gettinjiggywithit]
    #4247597 -

gettinjiggywithit said:
....there is way to much we still do not understand about the brain and "mind" to start jumping to huge conclusions.


"Chasm jumping", if you will. :smirk:

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :satansmoking:
Peace. :mushroom2:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: Diploid]
    #4247598 -

Diploid:

What you're doing here is pulling out the straw man argument. You've pulled the notion of what a soul is out of your ass and then proven your ass wrong. If I were to claim that a soul was kind of a wispy sort of see-through version of whoever it inhabited and was in control of all cognitive functions independant of any biological material (brain) then you might have some kind of argument, but as your little write-up stands, all you've done is negated the argument of some invented hyper-naive fantasy version of an imaginary idiot. Here's a condensed version of your post:

Definition of soul: Some kind of magical thing that overrides brain function. <----- remember this is your silly definition

+

Function of brain as proven through scientific method

= My silly definition of a soul (as something magical and mystical) is totally false! YAY!

It's like your shadowboxing against a semi-retarded version of yourself. Have I made myself clear? <---- Not rhetorical

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: gettinjiggywithit]
    #4247601 -

We know you through your typed words. If your computer processor had a glitch that did not allow for the typed word "the"

This analogy is not appropriate.

An appropriate analogy would be that, if you are the soul, and I'm and the external world, then all my words arrive at your computer intact (this is evidenced by the fact that people with damage to the AG understand all non-metaphorical language perfectly) but you can only read, understand, and reply to me as long as I don't use metaphors.

In other words, if I email you that my refrigerator is running... down the street, you will not be able to grasp the joke even though all the words arrived intact.

I don't buy the explanation that if the brain is damaged, then such a selective deficit in communication from the real world to the soul would occur, leaving all other language skills unaffected.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: Neurological Science And Evidence Of The Non-Existence Of A Soul [Re: rogue_pixie]
    #4247609 -

rogue_pixie said:
I knew all about that, did it all in Psychology!

Anyway, in response to your question...

Nothing can be proven, "there are no facts, only interpretations."


Nothing 'is True', Everything is Permissible.
~~ Hasan bin Sabbah


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Disclaimer!?

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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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