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How Are The Mind & The Brain Different? A Neuroscientist Explains
mindbodygreen.com ^ | March 8, 2021 | Caroline Leaf, Communication Pathologist and Neuroscientist

Posted on 09/21/2023 3:52:12 AM PDT by RoosterRedux

For many people, the mind and brain are interchangeable. They use one word or the other to talk about the same thing: the organ in our skull that we use to think.

However, the mind and brain are actually two very different, but interconnected, entities. As a neuroscientist, this reality is the foundation of my life's research and work: The mind works through the brain but is separate from the brain.

What is the difference between the mind and the brain? So what exactly is the difference between the mind and the brain? Well, the mind is separate, yet inseparable from, the brain.

The mind uses the brain, and the brain responds to the mind. The mind also changes the brain. People choose their actions—their brains do not force them to do anything. Yes, there would be no conscious experience without the brain, but experience cannot be reduced to the brain's actions.

The mind is energy, and it generates energy through thinking, feeling, and choosing. It is our aliveness, without which, the physical brain and body would be useless. That means we are our mind, and mind-in-action is how we generate energy in the brain.

This is a major part of the activity we pick up with brain technology. When we generate this mind energy through thinking, feeling, and choosing, we build thoughts, which are physical structures in our brain made of proteins. This building of thoughts creates structural changes in the brain, called neuroplasticity1.

In my recent clinical trials, we saw how energy in the brain changed as the subject was thinking, stimulating neuroplasticity. The brain was responding to the person's stream-of-consciousness and nonconscious activity.

The mind is a stream of nonconscious and conscious activity when we're awake, and a stream of nonconscious activity when we're asleep. It's characterized by a triad of thinking, feeling, and choosing. When you think, you will feel, and when you think and feel, you will choose. These three aspects always work together.

So, how does this affect us?

The brain is an extremely complex neuroplastic responder. This essentially means, each time it's stimulated by your mind, it responds in various ways—including neurochemical, genetic, and electromagnetic changes. This, in turn, grows and changes structures in the brain, building or wiring new physical thoughts.

The brain is never the same because it changes with every experience you have, every moment of every day. In sum: Your mind is how you, uniquely, experience life. It's responsible for how you think, feel, and choose. And your physical brain merely responds to these unique experiences.

Knowing your mind and brain are separate puts you in the control seat because you can learn to manage your thoughts and actions. Ultimately, it means you can choose what you build into your brain and how you choose to change what's already built in.

When you learn how to manage your mind, you can make feelings of depression, stress, anger, and anxiety work for you instead of against you. You can bring balance back into your brain and life.


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: aquarianconspiracy; brain; consciousness; consciousnesstheory; mind; neuroscience
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This is an older article that I thought was interesting just to remind us that we are our minds, not our brains.

Don't get hung up on the word "green" in the source. This article has nothing to do with politics. Directly at least.

1 posted on 09/21/2023 3:52:12 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

>>we are our minds, not our brains.

We are both.

Without the physical brain to encode it, the information making up the thinking ability and memories of the mind does not exist.


2 posted on 09/21/2023 4:05:18 AM PDT by FarCenter (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/aircraft-glitch-delays-canada-pm-trudeaus-departure-india-202)
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To: RoosterRedux

The mind is a made up term for people who don’t understand the details of consciousness. It’s a generic comprehensive term.

Like universe, body, weather, ....

They are just comprehensive general despriptors, used rather than identifying specific detailed attributes.


3 posted on 09/21/2023 4:07:42 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: FarCenter
The thing is, you don't know that. It's just an opinion like everything else we thing we "know."

And people who are brain dead but have so-called "near death" or "out of body" experiences would disagree with you.

4 posted on 09/21/2023 4:08:57 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: RoosterRedux

We are consciousness.

We just use our brains to communicate and interact with our environment at the lower frequencies.


5 posted on 09/21/2023 4:09:26 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: tired&retired

The human brain is more of a transmitter and receiver than a processor.


6 posted on 09/21/2023 4:10:29 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: tired&retired

True. But if we don’t give things a “word/name”...we can’t discuss them.


7 posted on 09/21/2023 4:10:41 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: RoosterRedux
There's a guy who's been affiliated with Stanford (not sure exactly to what degree) who has a couple of dozen video lectures on youtube that I've found interesting. He's a "neurobiologist" named Dr Robert Sopolsky and unless I've misunderstood his basic attitude on the matter (distinctly possible) he basically sees humans as apes who somehow managed to invent the 747.

Like I said he *is* interesting even if he is,by chance,misguided.

8 posted on 09/21/2023 4:11:52 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Two Words: BANANA REPUBLIC!)
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To: RoosterRedux

Very good read, thank you for the post.


9 posted on 09/21/2023 4:12:57 AM PDT by exnavy (Grow your faith, and have the courage to use it.)
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To: RoosterRedux
…brain = computer…
…mind = software…
10 posted on 09/21/2023 4:13:34 AM PDT by cyberaxe (....Uuuummpphhhh.....)
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To: exnavy

Glad you enjoyed it.:-)


11 posted on 09/21/2023 4:13:42 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Brain = “hardware”.
Mind = “software”.

That is of course not dealing with the philosophical and religious questions regarding the nature of consciousness and self-awareness.

CC


12 posted on 09/21/2023 4:15:42 AM PDT by Celtic Conservative (My cats are more amusing than 200 channels worth of TV.)
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To: RoosterRedux

So now introduce the concept of “personality”.;)


13 posted on 09/21/2023 4:16:00 AM PDT by exnavy (Grow your faith, and have the courage to use it.)
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To: FarCenter

The brain is an organ. The mind is what you make of it


14 posted on 09/21/2023 4:17:03 AM PDT by SMARTY (“Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.” Thomas Sowell)
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To: RoosterRedux

This is the way I see it using an analogy: your body is like a car. Your brain is like the main Central computer system that runs the car. Your mind is the driver.

The driver is not actually part of the car. Rather, the driver is a separate entity that’s put in the car. When the car fails via an accident or just age, the driver leaves the car and the car goes to the junkyard. And that includes its computer brain.

The driver gets a new car that is incorruptible and fit to be in the unseen realm and spend eternity with his creator


15 posted on 09/21/2023 4:17:14 AM PDT by cuban leaf (My prediction: Harris is Spiro Agnew. We'll soon see who becomes Gerald Ford, and our next prez.)
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To: tired&retired

Caroline Leaf is a neuropsychologist.

“During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn, into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic.....”

Basically it’s a cognitive mapping theory. She really doesn’t understand the process. It’s her model to promote and write books.

Her observations are accurate but her theory explaining her observations is not.


16 posted on 09/21/2023 4:17:52 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: tired&retired

As a priest once told me:

We ARE souls.
We HAVE bodies.

CC


17 posted on 09/21/2023 4:17:57 AM PDT by Celtic Conservative (My cats are more amusing than 200 channels worth of TV.)
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To: cuban leaf

That’s a pretty good analogy, except the driver is the soul and individual consciousness, and when the driver leaves the car, it’s dead.


18 posted on 09/21/2023 4:20:32 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: exnavy

Personality might be defined as the descriptor(s) used by one mind to describe his perception of the non-physical, interactive quality/aspect of another mind/brain/body being. “Interactive” being “the way that other being reacts to you (mostly) and others (to a lesser degree).”


19 posted on 09/21/2023 4:23:07 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Yes very good, i like it.


20 posted on 09/21/2023 4:24:35 AM PDT by exnavy (Grow your faith, and have the courage to use it.)
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