Metaneurology A spiritual view of the brain   (Second and final part) Dreams – Neurology has clarified the rhythms that our brain goes through during sleep and some chemical mechanisms linked thereto. Centres in the hypothalamus that stimulate the frontal lobe keeping us awake and cores of neurons located on
the bridge that leads us to sleep have already been identified. We also know that during some periods of sleep, the eyes move, revealing that in this moment we are dreaming. To sleep and to dream is essential to our survival. We are able to stay longer without eating than without sleep. The dream process is closely related to the consolidation of memories.

Our previous day won't be remembered if we do not sleep well and do not produce dreams. Some dreams can even be linked to the last moments of the party which entertained us.  

The study of the mind 

Much of the brain activity is easy to be recognized and defined. For example, reflexes are answers that the nervous system produces as it reacts to stimuli. Behaviours can be reduced to a set of attitudes. Emotion is a mood state. When we define mind, there will be neither competent nomenclature nor agreement amongst specialists. The mind is classically seen as a set of complex functions which includes memory, language, consciousness, perception and emotion. Anyway, the mind is a product of complex brain activity.  

The mental body 

Neurology understands that for all psychological phenomena exists a biological substrate that is revealed in brain activity. Neurons that become depolarised, circuits that organize themselves in networks, brain areas which are specialized in movements and sensations and regions that are grouped composing more or less complex  functions, building the memory and composing the language.

The mind would result immanent from this complex activity of the brain. Without the brain the mind would not exist.  

My proposal regarding the "mental body" is based on clinical evidence. Neurological examples suggest the existence of a body that comprises, builds and expresses the phenomena of the mind. With "meta-Neurology" we intend to sediment the idea that we can investigate and slowly add knowledge about  anatomy and physiology of the "mental body".  

Neurology could fractionate several brain functions. We know, for example, where the brain decodes the physical characteristics of an object, but we do not know how the brain integrates this information. How does the brain integrate our memories to provide us with an unique and permanent identity?

The "mental body" can resolve all these questions.

Research into that which occurs in clinical settings such as in hysteria, in somnambulistic trances , narcolepsy and in phantom limbs allows us to believe in the existence of a specific physiology of this "Mental body".

Thus, we can consider that it is not circumscribed within the limits of our physical body; is not restricted to the circuits and routes of brain anatomy but transits through environments that transcend the physical reality we know.  

Functions of the mental body 

Vision –The human eye registers the luminous impulse which allows us to identify objects around us. The "mental body" sees without the need of light. It takes hold of the properties of objects. Let us assume that we are looking at a coin. With our eyes we know its size, colour, shape, maybe its origin and its value. Let us say that this it is a coin of the time of the Empire. With the "mental" body, independent of luminosity that brightens up the currency, as well as identifying the reported physical characteristics, we can also register all events in connection with this currency. The environment of its production and the hands through  which it has been negotiated countless times.

The "mental" body registers the physical aspects and psychological events related to it.

The human eye is not an instrument of "vision" of the mental body. For the mental body detects the vibration of bodies, the objects are perceived everywhere within the "mental body" as if your fingertips touching this object. 

Spoken Language – the ability to speak, read and write are closely interrelated. For each one of these functions the brain uses a set of modules that are connected by association. A  child learns to speak by listening to people around her, progressively increasing her vocabulary.

In order to read and write she must absorb the meaning of symbols that represent things and ideas translated into words. There are neurological syndromes in patients that illustrate the behaviour of these functions. We have lesions which are capable of producing inability to recognize words –known as visual agnosia; to write – agraphia; to read – dyslexia and to talk – aphasia. These capacities are linked to the perception of mental content of ideas in the mental body, regardless of how they are expressed. Let's now consider that we are facing a book. We need to read all of it in order to get to know its contents. With the "mental body" we take hold of the ideas expressed in the book, as well as the events related to it and with its author. 

Memory - An individual is able to memorize a sequence of seven figures, to retain some familiar phone numbers, to know addresses of some friends, to remember their names and is able to report what he has done in recent days. When he gives account of past events or encounters with friends, he does it in a more or less incomplete manner, as some of these encounters became more marked and are seen as unforgettable.  Each of these accounts, when confronted with the testimony of others, has always the colour of other more or less emphatic versions. To describe a graduation party has as many versions as the number of graduates. The memory of a computer allows us to open an already written text and revise it to correct or add details. The memory of the "mental body" allow us to open the scenario of environment lived during the events at which we were present. It allows us to relive the past as if we had brought the past into the present. To experience a significant event for a second time we may add elements that we had not realized had occurred on the first occasion.

A detective could revise a robbery and this time write down the car number plate that he had seen fleeing. 

Dreams – The "mental body" is not a prisoner of the physical body, during sleep, it has the possibility to more or less partially release itself. The emancipation of the "mental body" facilitated by sleep puts the "mental body" body before other realities that it grasps according to its level of knowledge. An inexperienced person placed before an unknown environment will notice very little of what he is seeing. Without experience we become totally lost in an ICU of a hospital, in the middle of a dense forest, in command of an aircraft or in a crowd in a strange country. And it will be that these experiences must be reported after passing through the filter of the physical brain. This is the extraordinary content of dreams, a spiritual insight that is filtered by the physical brain. Occasionally, in special cases, we will register a faithful rendering of events that we experienced whilst dreaming, fixating it with complete lucidity. 

The mind – We have as hypothesis, that the mind is an entity that embodies itself in an organized structure that we call the "mental body".

This body has an extra-cerebral existence and properties that are differentiated from known brain functions. Neurologic semiology through analysing certain clinical syndromes, can reveal functions which clearly confirm the existence of a "mental body". We realize that the physiology of the mental body gives us reliable information that places the mental body beyond the physical brain. Exploring its memories we can distinctly relive the past. We confirm that its sensitivity is affected by vibration of substances.

Its form of perception enables us contact with the content and meaning of objects, rather than with the form, and the language is processed by the transmission of ideas.

The "mental body" inaugurates a new paradigm for clinical neuroscience.