Texts, articles and reviews with the following URL: label: 'neuroscience'.
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
Neuromorphic Computing and Nanotechnologies
summaryNeuroscience 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
The future of human being: neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives
summaryThe vision of humanity's 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
summaryPhilosophical 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
God in the brain? Religious experience from neuroscience
summaryNeuroscience can consider studying religious experience; this approach can also be of great interest to theology. Both lines open up an interdisciplinary field of study that allows us to reflect on Theology in relation to the sciences and as a requirement of thought.
Author: José Manuel Giménez-Amaya
The New Scientific Study of Religion: Contributions, Limits and Challenges
summaryThe 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
summaryThe neuroscientific attempt to explain out-of-body sensations and religious experiences has often been attributed to neurological disturbances 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?
summaryBrief summary of the quantum models that attempt to explain consciousness, the purely physical determinants of such an explanation, and a concluding view on quantum mechanics within the mind-brain problem.
AuthorJavier Sánchez-Cañizares
Brain activity and diagnostic caution
summary article in the New England Journal of Medicine reports brain activity in response to speech verbal in patients in a persistent vegetative state. This data forces us to be cautious when diagnosing this state.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
Brain and soul: new ways of looking at an old problem 
summaryThe main ideas that I would like to transmit in my chapter are as follows:1. The neuroscience is a biological discipline, which was aimed in its foundation as an interdisciplinary common research. That is, in my opinion, the main reason for showing a great ability of growing in knowledge integration as we have seen and experienced in the last forty years.However, one of the most remarkable hints in this integrative development could be summarized in the following question: why the humanities studies have recently been of great interest for the neuroscience itself ? 3. To answer this crucial interdisciplinary enquiry, I will try to give you an idea about how difficult it has been for this neurobiological discipline to fully develop an explanation of the human being as a whole from the unique perspective of the functioning of the nervous system.4In a final approach and in contrast with the above-mentioned in n. 3, I will attempt to illustrate how coherent and consistent are the recent neurobiological discoveries (specially related to the field of the systems neurobiology) and the anthropological view of the aristotelian-thomistic philosophical tradition.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
From Neuroscience to Neuroethics. Scientific narrative and philosophical reflection.
summaryReview of José Manuel Giménez Amaya and Sergio Sánchez-Migallón. From Neuroscience to Neuroethics. Scientific narrative and philosophical reflection. Eunsa. Pamplona (2010). 183 pp. The work reflects on new scientific developments in Neuroscience and Neuroethics, looking at the limits of experimental sciences and the current need for interdisciplinary approaches.
Author: José Ignacio Murillo
Dr Crick's brain. Searching for the soul with the scalpel
summaryCommentary 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
The intelligent organism: misunderstandings about a paradox
summaryReflections on materialism and its inconsistency based on the thesis of some neuroscientists who pretend to include thought in their scientific field.
Author: José Ignacio Murillo
Understanding freedom better: an interdisciplinary approach between Neuroscience and Philosophy
summaryThe author 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, of the neural networks themselves and of the neurobiological integration of attention, important phenomena for an adequate 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
The ambiguity of "neuroethics".
summary lecture : conference delivered at the Closing Ceremony of the Master's Degree in Bioethics. Universidad Católica San Antonio (Murcia), 21 January 2011.
Author: Sergio Sánchez-Migallón
Author: José Ángel Lombo and José Manuel Giménez Amaya
summaryArticle on the relationship between neurophysiology and consciousness.
Author: Amadeo Muntané Sánchez
"Genetics is not incompatible with human freedom".
summaryInterview with José Ignacio Murillo in Ambos mundos on freedom, genetic determinism, environmental influence and neuroethics.
Author: Daniel Capó
summary essay on Steven Pinker, the first part of which was published in the October 2008 issue of
issue 119 of Nueva Revista for the month of October 2008.
Author: Marciano Escutia
summary essay on Steven Pinker, the first part of which was published in the October 2008 issue of
issue 119 of Nueva Revista for the month of October 2008.
Author: Marciano Escutia
summaryAn interdisciplinary approach from philosophy and neuroscience.
Author: José Ángel Lombo y José Manuel Giménez Amaya
summaryReview of an issue of the Revue des Questions Scientifiques from 1880, in which the arguments on science and religion are very similar to those of today.
Author: José María Valderas
Mind and brain in contemporary neuroscience.
An approach to their interdisciplinary study
summaryThe 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 mankind. 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 exposition is structured by pointing out the framework in which this problem is posed, and then summarily explaining 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, nuclei of entrance of the basal ganglia and substantia nigra in decision-making.
Author: Javier Bernácer
Neurobiology of "attachment bonding" and pregnancy
summaryFunctional 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
summaryFor many neuroscientists and philosophers of mind, the phenomenon of freedom can be fully explained by neuroscience. This paper attempts to show that a careful study of the situation and perspectives of Neuroscience reveals to what extent this thesis is problematic.
Author: José M. Giménez-Amaya and José I. Murillo
summary article on the origin and contents of neuroethics: scientific meetings core topic and positions of Adina L. Roskies, Judy Illes, Martha Farah, Thomas Fuchs, Walter Glannon, Jonathan Moreno and Neil Levy.
Author: Sergio Sánchez-Migallón Granados and José Manuel Giménez Amaya
seminar Neuroscience and freedom
summaryreview from seminar of the CRYF of December 18, 2007, which summarizes the main discussion paper of Professor José Manuel Giménez Amaya.
Author: José Manuel Giménez Amaya
Author: José A. Lombo and José M. Giménez-Amaya
Time, consciousness and freedom: considerations on the experiments of B. Libet and collaborators.
summaryThis article is about the experiment by 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