Texts, articles and reviews with the label: 'brain'.
Recent
Mind-brain relationships and neuroscience- neuroscience dialoguePhilosophy
summaryThe interdisciplinary study of the mind-brain relationship allows two approaches: from neuroscience to Philosophy, and from Philosophy to neuroscience. The application of these relationships to ethics and social dependence is explored.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya and José Angel Lombo
Neuroscience and quantum mechanics
summaryThe relationship between quantum mechanics and neuroscience is discussed. Models that attempt the connection between brain activity and conscious experience by means of quantum mechanics are presented. And the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem is clarified.
Author: Javier Sánchez Cañizares
Some considerations on the problematic relationship between brain and freedom
summaryThe purely scientific study of freedom faces internal contradictions derived from what science itself can achieve, which invalidate any attempt in that direction. A methodological solution is pointed out in order to adequately approach the problem.
Author: Juan Arana Cañedo-Argüelles
Neuromorphic Computing and Nanotechnologies
summary: Neuroscience knowledge can be combined with new nanotechnology techniques to build systems that capture and compute by mimicking the brain; this "neuromorphic computing" is a promising area of Artificial Intelligence advances.
Author: Bernabé Linares-Barranco
A biological theory of freedom
summary: review by Juan Arana from the book Joaquín M. Fuster, Cerebro y libertad. Los cimientos cerebrales de nuestra capacidad para elegir (Barcelona, Ariel, 2016. 375 pp.); sample his explanation of human freedom, naturalistic but without scientific simplifications.
Author: Juan Arana.
The future of human being: neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives 
summary: Humanity's vision of the future is currently shaped by science and technology. This is not only a contemporary conditioning of our thinking, but a deeper limitation to our correct understanding of what it means to be human.
Author: Saša Horvat
summary: Philosophical reflection on some fundamental dimensions of creativity: it concludes that there are no compelling reasons to differentiate between scientific and artistic creativity and examines the possibility of creativity through artificial intelligence.
Author: Carlos Blanco
The New Scientific Study of Religion: Contributions, Limits and Challenges 
summary: The last 15 years have seen an extensive development in the application of cognitive and evolutionary methods to the study of religion. The accumulated bibliography is very extensive and several orientations are outlined, with wide-ranging debates between their respective representatives. However, there has also been a growing issue of critics who highlight its limits and errors, as well as the lack of empirical evidence that afflicts a large part of this project. It is time to take stock in order to discern what these developments may have contributed to us, above all for a better knowledge of the Christian faith, and for the dialogue between faith and science; as well as to understand their errors and respond to the challenges they have posed.
Author: Lluis Oviedo
Libertarianism in the face of experiments "subject Libet".
summary: Benjamin Libet's experiments on the temporal sequence in the electrophysiology of certain voluntary acts have produced a discussion in Philosophy and neuroscience. Many authors have seen in them a convincing test against the existence of free actions. More recent experiments, carried out with fMRI or deep electrodes, seem to lead to the same conclusion. However, the argumentation followed by their defenders has received important criticism.
Author: José Manuel Muñoz Ortega
summary: From neuroscience, the attempt to explain out-of-body sensations and religious experiences has often been attributed to neurological alterations, or even genetic predispositions. These scientific explanations do not allow us to deny human spirituality.
Author: Luis María Gonzalo Sanz
Is quantum mechanics relevant to the scientific understanding of the mind-brain problem?
summary: Brief summary of the quantum models that attempt to explain consciousness, the purely physical determinants of this explanation, and a conclusive vision of quantum mechanics within the mind-brain problem.
Author: Javier Sánchez-Cañizares
summary: summary on Noam Chomsky and his theories (Chomsky, linguistic scientist and socio-political activist, Chomsky and human nature, the limitations of science, the origin of language) and a possible way out of his naturalism, based on the work of C. S. Lewis (a liberating, rational and complementary proposal , the rise of the spirit, the fall of the spirit).
Author: Marciano Escutia
Dr Crick's brain. Searching for the soul with the scalpel
summary: Commentary on Francis Crick's book, published at the age of 77, on the brain and consciousness, in which he mixes interesting scientific perspectives with a cheap, anti-religious materialism, unbecoming of a Nobel Prize winner award . Almost all of Crick's book is a knowledge dissemination of current knowledge about the brain and, above all, about vision. The ideological burden is concentrated in the Preface and Introduction, at the beginning of the book, and in the last chapter and a short final epilogue: 33 pages in all. Not much. But it is these 33 pages that give the book a provocative and polemical tone.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Understanding freedom better: an interdisciplinary approach between Neuroscience and Philosophy
summary: It presents some philosophical assumptions that are influencing the neuroscientific study of freedom, as well as certain problems that arise from Neuroscience itself in its global understanding of brain functioning, the neural networks themselves and the neurobiological integration of attention, important phenomena for a proper neurobiological understanding of freedom. He criticises a purely reductionist view of free will. He comments on the modern concept of freedom and the need for interdisciplinarity to address these issues. sample a subtle persistence of dualism in some of the approaches that study freedom and recovers the concept of life in the understanding of human activity.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
Interview with José Manuel Giménez Amaya: "Genetics does not determine human behaviour". 
Author: J.A. Otero Ricart
summary: Article on the relationship between neurophysiology and consciousness.
Author: Amadeo Muntané Sánchez
"Genetics is not incompatible with human freedom".
summary: Interview with José Ignacio Murillo in Ambos mundos on freedom, genetic determinism, environmental influence and neuroethics.
Author: Daniel Capó
summary: Interdisciplinary approach from Philosophy and neuroscience.
Author: José Ángel Lombo and José Manuel Giménez Amaya
Mind and brain in contemporary neuroscience.
An approach to its interdisciplinary study
summary: The impressive development of neuroscience in recent decades has highlighted its need to turn to multidisciplinarity to address the challenges it faces. Among these challenges are those that relate to questions that are decisive for the understanding of man. This article argues that in order to address them effectively, cooperation between the sciences needs to be extended beyond the realm of experimental disciplines. As an illustration of this thesis , after an introduction on the importance of Neuroscience in our times, one of the most relevant aspects for the understanding of the role played by the brain in human life and behaviour is addressed: the problem of consciousness. The exhibition is structured by pointing out the framework in which this problem is posed, and then summarising how Neuroscience and Philosophy have dealt with it. Finally, some suggestions are presented for the fruitful development of an interdisciplinary study that allows each of the sciences involved to make its own contribution.
Author: José M. Giménez-Amaya and José I. Murillo
Neurobiology of action, decision and habitus
summary: presentation on the neurobiological instructions of human action: voluntary movement, the basal ganglia in the enrichment and selection of actions, and the network of ventromedial cerebral cortex, entrance nuclei of the basal ganglia and substantia nigra in decision-making.
Author: Javier Bernácer
Neurobiology of "attachment bonding" and pregnancy
summary: Functional neuroimaging techniques show how certain brain areas are activated, while others are silenced, when a mother sees her daughter or son, or hears their voices. It is the correlate of the emotion, which in the presence of her child, in various circumstances, generates in the mother. The brain is organised to mediate the complex maternal behaviour. For this, gene expression is orchestrated by different hormones and neurochemical factors during pregnancy. Maternal behaviour can be reasonably characterised in terms of cognitive-emotional interactions and for which the amygdaloid complex functions as a nodal point connecting cognition and emotion.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
Neuroscience and freedom. An interdisciplinary approach
summary: For many neuroscientists and philosophers of mind, the phenomenon of freedom can be fully explained by neuroscience. This work attempts to show that a careful study of the status and perspectives of Neuroscience reveals the extent to which this thesis is problematic.
Author: José M. Giménez-Amaya and José I. Murillo
Author: Antonio Pardo
seminar Neuroscience and freedom
summary review from of the CRYF of December 18, 2007, which summarizes the main of Professor José Manuel Giménez Amaya.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya seminar discussion paper
Author: José A. Lombo and José M. Giménez-Amaya
Time, consciousness and freedom: considerations on the experiments of B. Libet and collaborators.
summary: This article is about the experiment of Libet and his colleagues on conscious decisions and others inspired by it. The discussion concentrates especially on two themes. Firstly, on the relation between consciousness and time. And, secondly, on the idea of freedom that is presupposed in these experiments.
Author: José Ignacio Murillo and José Manuel Giménez-Amaya
summary: Life extension methods promoted by the transhumanist movement, especially mind transfer; the secularist matrix of this method is sample . Its attempt to bring immortality under human control takes the process of secularisation to a level never seen before.
Author: Leandro Gaitán