Brain, Mood, and Cognition

A philosophical mind-experiment asks, if a mad scientist kidnapped you and your best friend, and translated your brains into each other's bodies — where would YOU be? Almost any modern person would immediately answer, “Where my brain is.” It's unlikely that any scientist, mad or otherwise, will be performing that experiment any time soon, so we don't have an empirical answer. But the immediacy of our response, our confidence as to where our self is located, reveals a strong bias in Western culture towards the mind as our source of identity, and the brain, intelligence, and memory as its means of expression. Any process that impedes our cognitive function is a source of real concern. It means not only loss of function, but a loss of self.