The material basis of function in the brain: Connections to philosophy of biology and phenomenology

这个项目汇集了两种截然不同的关于心灵和大脑的观点，一种基于神经科学，另一种基于哲学。副主任（一位神经科学家）将通过探索大脑细胞机制的神经科学工作与精神活动中身体体验的现象学工作之间的联系来弥合这些观点；PI将与PI，一位哲学家合作。拟议的项目将有助于阐明和扩展神经科学的概念基础，以适应使用现象学见解的新数据。在这个项目中，神经科学的三个中心主题是有争议的。它们如下。大脑的主要目的是处理信息，神经元是大脑的关键功能成分，信息处理是通过神经元激活的模式来完成的。星形胶质细胞和其他非神经元元素在塑造大脑活动中的积极作用的发现，正使上述神经科学的中心主题变得紧张，因为这些发现表明，信息处理可能不会那么容易地脱离其他物质元素，如周围的星形胶质细胞和血流，特定分子的作用，或使其成为可能的神经元内的细胞过程。Co-PI将与生物信息本质上的类似辩论进行类比，在生物信息中，人们认为遗传信息是一种过度简化，除非在特定的细胞环境中出现，否则毫无意义。Co-PI将通过探索现象学家的具体化概念不仅可以应用于个体有机体的层面，还可以应用于大脑的细胞和细胞组装层面来实现这一目标。现象学家长期以来一直认为，像感知这样的心理活动也必须是强烈的，本质上是物理的，与我们的身体联系在一起，与他们的物理环境联系在一起。潜在的广泛影响该项目有望改善神经科学和哲学领域之间的交流。它将为神经科学的核心努力提供一个扩展的定义，它还将提供一个功能主义或计算方法对大脑的好处和危险的阐述，这些方法抽象了功能的生物学细节。目标是提高科学家和哲学家对这些影响的认识，以及依赖于计算方法的大型新项目的赞助者，如美国国立卫生研究院的人类连接组倡议。

IntroductionThis project brings together two distinct perspectives on the mind and the brain, one based in neuroscience and the other in philosophy. The Co-PI (a neuroscientist) will bridge these perspectives by exploring connections between neuroscientific work on cellular mechanisms in the brain and work in phenomenology on the experience of the body in mind-like activities; the PI will do so in collaboration with the PI, a philosopher. The proposed project will serve to articulate and expand the conceptual underpinnings of neuroscience to fit new data using insights from phenomenology.Intellectual meritThree central themes of neuroscience are at issue in this project. They are the following. The central purpose of the brain is to process information, neurons are the key functional constituents of the brain, and information processing is performed by patterns of neuron activation. The discovery of an active role for astrocytes and other non-neuronal elements in shaping the brain's activities is straining the central themes of neuroscience indicated above since these discoveries suggest that information processing may not be so easily divorced from other material elements such as the surrounding astrocytes and blood flow, the roles of particular molecules, or cellular processes within the neuron that make it possible. The Co-PI will draw parallels to similar debates in the nature of biological information, where it has been argued that genetic information is an oversimplification that is meaningless except in the particular cellular context in which it appears. The Co-PI will do so by exploring ways in which the phenomenologist's notion of embodiment may apply not just at the level of an individual organism, but at the cellular and cell-assembly level in the brain as well. Phenomenologist has long argued that mental activities like perception must also be intensely and intrinsically physical and bound to our bodies and engagement with their physical environments.Potential Broader impactsThe project promises to improve communication between the field of neuroscience and philosophy. It will provide an expanded definition of the core endeavor of neuroscience, and it will also provide an articulation of the advantages and dangers of a functionalist or computational approach to the brain that abstracts away the biological details of functions. The goal is to enhance awareness of these implications among scientists and philosophers, as well as sponsors of large new projects that depend on the computational approach, such as the Human Connectome Initiative of NIH.