Time Magazine (Cover Story): Your Mind, Your Body
By Michael D. Lemonick
Posted Sunday, January 12, 2002; 8:31 a.m. EST
If you close your eyes and think about it for a while, as philosophers have
done for centuries, the world of the mind seems very different from the one
inhabited by our bodies. The psychic space inside our heads is infinite and
ethereal; it seems obvious that it must be made of different stuff than all
the other organs. Cut into the body, and blood pours forth. But slice into
the brain, and thoughts and emotions don't spill out onto the operating
table. Love and anger can't be collected in a test tube to be weighed and
measured. Rene Descartes, the great 17th century French mathematician and philosopher,
enshrined this metaphysical divide in what came to be known in Western
philosophy as mind-body dualism. Many Eastern mystical traditions,
contemplating the same inner space, have come to the opposite conclusion.
They teach that the mind and body belong to an indivisible continuum. In the
past, doctors and scientists have tended to dismiss that view as bunk, but
the more they learn about the inner workings of the mind, the more they
realize that in this regard at least, the mystics are right and Descartes
was dead wrong. Mind and body, psychologists and neurologists now agree, aren't that
different. The brain is just another organ, albeit more intricate than the
rest. The thoughts and emotions that seem to color our reality are the
result of complex electrochemical interactions within and between nerve
cells. The disembodied voices of schizophrenia and the feelings of
worthlessness and self-hatred that accompany depression, although they seem
to be based on reality, are no more than distortions in brain
electrochemistry. Researchers are learning how these distortions arise, how
to lessen their severity and, in some cases, how to correct them. Scientists are also learning something else. Not only is the mind like the
rest of the body, but the well-being of one is intimately intertwined with
that of the other. This makes sense because they share the same
systems--nervous, circulatory, endocrine and immune. What happens in the
pancreas or liver can directly affect brain function. Disorders of the
brain, conversely, can send out biochemical shock waves that disturb the
rest of the body. The pages that follow, our annual special report on
health, take you to the cutting edge of mind-body research, where
scientists, having left Descartes's great mistake far behind, are exploring
how the brain works, how it malfunctions, and what can be done when it goes
awry. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030120/story.html
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