The Mind and Body Are One

The Mind and Body Are One The Cartesian view of the mind as distinct from the body persists in twenty-first century discourse as the mind-body problem alluded to by Gary Berntson. Berntson provides evidence that the mind and the body, psychology and physiology, are not independent of each other but represent different levels of organization of human organisms. Beliefs influence thoughts, behaviors, and physiology, and peripheral physiological processes signal central neural networks that influence cognitions and feelings crucial for the generation and moderation of beliefs. Spiritual beliefs are considered by some to be contentious candidates for scientific examination, yet Berntson argues that spiritual beliefs can be identified, measured, and subjected to scientific investigation in the same fashion as any other belief or invisible force. Accordingly, Berntson examines the effects of a specific spiritual belief — the belief that one has a close personal relationship with God. As documented by Berntson, this belief is associated with rather profound physiological and health effects. Whereas Berntson focuses on the influence of the mind on the body and vice versa, Giin Semin speaks of the mind in the body and, more specifically, in several bodies simultaneously. In his social cognition model, Semin challenges the limits of individual social cognition and argues that regulation and co-regulation of social behavior are distributed across brains. When several individuals exhibit spontaneous synchronized behaviors (e.g., hand- clapping), the human tendency is to invoke a “supra-individual” explanation. Semin describes a mechanism by which Page |57 the supra-individual source can be explained as shared motor representations and ongoing monitoring of observed actions that, under certain conditions, lead to dissolution of the boundary between self and other. The resulting shared experience of unity and collective identity may feel transcendental, but the mechanisms are as real and explicable as those governing individual behaviors and experiences. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021303