ghost

Of the ghost is the sum of all internal processes of thinking, perception and feeling. It is related to the concept of consciousness and enables cognitive processes such as thinking, planning, problem solving, making decisions, choosing or learning and remembering. Disturbances in these mental processes can have physical and psychological causes.

What is the mind

The general public understands spirit as the thinking consciousness of man. The mind is thus closely linked to the ability to perceive. To be distinguished from the mind is the brain or the mind. The brain plays a role in perception and thinking processes of consciousness, but the two expressions are not to be understood as synonyms.

A person's mind can be measured by their cognitive abilities. The cognition and the mind relate to information processing in the human system. His cognition distinguishes humans from all other living beings. In addition to perception, problem-solving and learning, human cognition also includes remembering, thinking in all its forms and fantasizing.

Cognitive processes are also the processes of selection, planning, observation, assessment and decision-making. In this context, alertness, mindfulness and concentration are important components of cognitive ability and therefore also play a key role for the human mind.

In addition to thought processes and perception processes, cognition and mind also participate in emotions and beliefs. In addition to psychology, neurosciences are now also researching these relationships.

Function & task

The human mind takes on important tasks in information processing. Information reaches human consciousness via the perceptual system. Which components of a perception actually pass into consciousness depends on the human mind.

The mind thus determines what is consciously perceived. Apart from that, it determines how what is consciously perceived is processed, how something feels or how something is experienced. In the end, the mind controls what and how a person thinks and feels.

All people are endowed with the same anatomical structures of perception. The ways in which information is processed, the content of consciousness and the mental and emotional processes associated with a situation differ fundamentally with each person.

This is because different people's minds are never the same. Today, cognitive psychology and neuroscience know that all internal processes of a person are shaped partly by culture and partly by individual experiences. How people perceive and reflect on what they perceive cannot be generalized.

In order to better understand processes such as thinking, perception and memory, cognitive psychology uses what is known as priming today. With this method, the processing time of a target stimulus is influenced by the presentation of a certain stimulus. On the basis of priming, one can now guess that the human mind is built up in a network-like structure.

Unlike psychology, the neurosciences do not start studying the mind directly on the spiritual level. They work on the level of brain activities, which are presumably not to be equated with mental activities. Nevertheless, neuroscience emphasizes to this day that all mental activities do not take place independently of neural events.

Examples of this are lesions in the brain that can trigger cognitive impairments. Lesions in the Wernicke Center, for example, disrupt speech processing. Even emotional and personality changes can result from brain lesions. Apart from that, mental activities such as perception, sensation and thinking seem to be related to neural actions of specific brain regions.

Research into these relationships is still in its infancy. So far, neuroscientists have not been able to answer the question of why a particular brain activity is linked to a specific experience. Nevertheless, brain research wants to localize mental consciousness in the brain in the future.

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Illnesses & ailments

Mental impairment can be due to physical ailments. For example, if one of the many perceptual centers of the brain is damaged by inflammation, tumors or degeneration, the general perceptual ability of humans suffers.

For this reason, lesions in the brain can change general information processing, certain thought processes and even emotional states. In extreme cases, lesions in the brain trigger cognitive disorders and intellectual disabilities.

Psychology, in turn, deals with diseases and disorders of the mind without a neurological cause. With forms of "mental illness" internal and conscious processes are disturbed. An example of this are hallucinations of the sensory modalities, as they can occur, for example, in the course of schizophrenic diseases.

Some disorders of the psyche trigger misperceptions of every sensory modality. Others limit themselves to a structure of perception. For example, phantosmias occur in some patients. You smell certain smells in the absence of an appropriate source of irritation. According to research, this phenomenon occurs mostly as a result of trauma.

Even with personality disorders, perception and with it a mental structure is disturbed in the broadest sense. Those affected no longer perceive themselves correctly as part of the disease.

The causes of disturbances of the mind and the psyche can be manifold. In addition to trauma, emotional shocks, mood disorders, unsatisfied instincts and hereditary factors, many other scenarios can trigger a mental disorder with the involvement of cognitive processes.