In the early years of school we learned that the Human Body is made up of the head, trunk and limbs. We see that, from an early age, we are excluding the Mind from what we are taught about the body. No one can deny that each of us has a unique and exclusive body, but considering the existence of the mind, it allows us to experience and work with more than one "body" as we will see in my following exposition.

I will start by presenting four "bodies".

The first one is called “body or brain representation”. Wilder Penfield, a Montreal neurosurgeon stimulating the motor cortex in the frontal lobe of epileptic patients awake, could identify that our body movements are constantly "represented” in our brains. It is odd, and everyone who studies already knows that Penfield found not the neurons corresponding to the muscles, but the group of neurons that “represent” a particular motor activity, i.e., the movement found in the cortex and not the drawing of the muscles. It is worth insisting on this statement: it is the movement that builds the motor cortex. The anatomical configuration discovered by Penfield became known as "Homunculus" due to its absurd characteristics, showing large proportions for the face, tongue and hands, contrasting with the small expression of the legs and chest, for example.

When an injury occurs in this motor area, the individual develops a typical paralysis on the opposite side of the body. I said typical because neurologists are able to semiologically evaluate these patients and accurately determine the site of injury by clinical signs they encounter. The arm becomes paralyzed and contracts in flexion, while the leg paralyzes and stiffens by stretching the muscles. Thus, the paralyzed hand still approaches the mouth and the extended leg allows him to walk.

In children, a congenital lesion may occur in this area, such as porencephalic cysts. Compromising the motor region, the child is born with a disability that is noted almost immediately after birth. Paralysis and disuse early in life will lead to more or less severe atrophy of the compromised hemibody. It is seen that the arm and leg on the compromised side are smaller than on the healthy side. This child usually presents, associated with its motor deficit, a social and learning difficulty. Cerebellar and cognitive functions often accompany this motor deficit by widening the spectrum of difficulties in these children.

Secondly, we live with the “body image”. It is a function of the right parietal lobe and several studies have revealed its participation in our daily lives and in more or less severe pathological situations. From 3 years old the child begins to discover its body. It reaches out to pick up objects. It puts its little foot in its mouth. It also replaces the pacifier with the thumb. It also pushes the objects with its feet. As it becomes a teenager, it becomes a friend of the mirror and takes care of itself as a jewel. The quick growth that adolescence stimulates leaves striking traces on the clumsy young man who bumps into the furniture due to miscalculation between his body and space.

Anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphism are already popular in the media. Usually a young woman unhappy with her body tortures herself in perverse regimes that severely compromise her health. Others become regulars of plastic surgery offices trying a modeling that nature did not provide them.

The "body image" is a representation of personal characteristics. In this function of the parietal lobe, it is the brain that builds the body. A good example to identify it can be seen when we are facing a shop window of clothes. The majority of women know very well the clothes that will suit and fall well on their bodies. It is this body image that anticipates the result of a garment that you do not even have to dress it to know if it is going to fall well or not.

Parietal lesions (right parietal) cause a classic syndrome in Neurology. It is the heminegligence. The injured patient ignores everything on his left, including his hemibody. It has its left limbs as if belonging to a stranger.

In the third place, I want to make a note regarding the "mental image." Here it is the imagination that builds the body. The best example is in young beginners striving to be models. They try to convince themselves mentally of having a desired and never achieved body. They see each other in one way and are seen in another. They almost never admit to thinness that they actually have in excess. The famous “Giseles” represent the “idealized” body that these young people introject into the unconscious for their personal fulfillment. In boys, it occurs in a similar way. Young teens, admirers of body fitness, worship their body, indulging in exaggerated gym practices. They, too, have their idealized muscular body model in their mind. The “mental image” they make of themselves is not always reflected in the mirror or in the eyes of others.

Finally, what in my opinion deserves our greatest reflection is the “mental body”.

The “mental body”

Neurology understands that for all psychological phenomena there is a biological substrate that reveals itself in brain activity. Depolarizing neurons, circuits - that organize themselves into networks -, brain areas that specialize movements and sensations, and regions that group together to form more or less complex functions, to construct thought, memory, and language. The mind would therefore be the immanent result of this complex brain activity. Without the brain there would be no mind.

In my proposal the mind is outside the brain, in the "mental body," and this is confirmed by clinical evidence. Neurological examples suggest the existence of a body that composes, constructs, and expresses the phenomena of the mind. With the title of “metaneurology” we intend to solidify the idea that we can gradually investigate and add knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of this “mental body”.

Neurology has been able to fragment several brain functions. We know, for example, where the brain decodes an object's physical characteristics, color, position, movement, and even function, but we do not know how the brain integrates this information. How does the brain maintain our personal memories to provide us with a unique and permanent identity? The "mental body" can solve all these questions.

The investigation of what occurs in various clinical situations, such as in hysteria, sleepwalking trance, narcolepsy, phantom limb, allows us to identify the existence of a “specific physiology” that characterizes this “mental body”. We may, for example, find that it (the mental body) does not trap itself within the limits of our physical body; it is not restricted to the circuits and pathways of the brain anatomy and "circulates" through environments that transcend the physical reality we know.

Functions of the “mental body”

Vision - The human eye records the luminous impulse that allows us to identify the objects around us. The "mental body" sees without the need for light. It seizes the properties of objects. Let's consider that we are facing a coin. With our eyes we will know its size, color, shape, perhaps its origin and value. Let's say this is an Empire time coin. With the “mental body”, regardless of the brightness that lightens the coin, we will identify beyond the reported physical characteristics, and we can record all events related to this coin. The environment of its manufacture and the hands in which it has been dealt with numerous times. The “mental body” records the physical aspects and related psychological events.

The human eye is not the instrument of vision of the "mental body". Since what it detects is the vibration of bodies, objects are perceived anywhere in the “mental body” such as the fingertips that touch this object.

Spoken language - The ability to speak, read and write are closely interrelated. For each of these functions the brain uses a set of modules that link by association. The child learns to speak by listening to the people around it, progressively increasing its vocabulary. To read and write it will have to absorb the meaning of the symbols that represent things and ideas translated into words. There are clinical pictures in neurological patients that didactically illustrate the behavior of these functions. We have lesions capable of producing inability to recognize the words - visual agnosia; for writing - agraphics; to read - dyslexia, and to speak - aphasia. In the mental body these capacities are linked to the perception of the mental content of ideas, regardless of how they are expressed.

Let us now consider that we are facing a book. We need to read all of its content to know what it contains. With the "mental body" we seize the ideas expressed in the book, the events related to it and its author.

Memory - The average person can memorize a sequence of seven numbers, remembers some family phones, knows the address of some friends, remembers their names, and is able to report what they have done in recent days. When he reports on old events such as parties or meetings with friends, he reports them more or less incompletely, showing that some of these meetings have become more marked and are considered unforgettable. Each of these accounts, when confronted with the testimony of others, always has the color of other more or less emphatic versions. Describing a graduation party has as many versions as the number of graduates.

The memory of a computer allows us to open a previously written text and revise it to correct or add details. The memory of the “mental body” allows us to open the scenario of the environment lived during the events we witnessed. It allows us to relive the past as if we brought it to the present. Experiencing a fact a second time, we may add elements that we had not realized the first time it occurred. A detective could review a robbery and now write down the license plate of the car he saw escaping.

Dreams - The "mental body" is not a prisoner of the physical body, and during sleep it has the possibility of being more or less partially released. The emancipation of the “mental body” facilitated by sleep puts the “mental body” before other realities that it apprehends according to its level of knowledge. An inexperienced person facing an unfamiliar environment will realize very little of what they are witnessing. Without experience we will be totally lost in the ICU of a hospital, in the middle of some woods, in control of an airplane or among the crowd in a strange country. And that is how these experiences will have to be reported after they pass through the physical brain filter. This is the extraordinary content of dreams, a spiritual perception filtered through the physical brain. Occasionally, in special situations, we will be able to record a faithful copy of events we have dreamed of, fixing it with complete lucidity.

The Mind - We have as a hypothesis that the mind is an entity that is embodied in an organized structure we call the "mental body." This body has extra-cerebral existence and properties that differ from known brain functions.

Neurological semiology, analyzing certain clinical conditions, can reveal functions that clearly confirm the existence of the "mental body." We can see that the physiology of the “mental body” gives us reliable information that places it beyond the physical brain. By exploring the memories we can clearly relive the past. We confirm that its sensitivity is affected by the vibration of the substances. Its form of perception enables us to be in touch with the content and meaning of objects rather than with form, and language is processed by the transmission of ideas.

The “mental body”, in my view, inaugurates a new paradigm for clinical neuroscience.