American Journal of Bioethics.
Advances in neuroscience over the past 50 years have been
spectacular, and they appear to keep coming at an acceler-
ating rate. With them has come increased understanding
of many core phenomena of brain function with broad im-
plications for science, for patients, and for public policy.
Among the most important consequences of neuroscience
progress is the near demise of dualist views of mind and
body. For example, the increased ability over the past two
decades to observe both the structure and activity levels
in various parts of the brains of living, awake, behaving
individuals through neuroimaging has allowed us to ob-
serve the neurobiological expression of the mind in action.
Even though we have yet to understand in any detail the
processes by which neural activity is transduced or con-
verted into mental experience, there is, by now, widespread
agreement, at least among scientists, that although ?the
mind? as a conceptual entity is greater than the sum of
its neurobiological parts, it is nonetheless made up of
those parts and their activity. Most members of the lay
public would agree that their minds reside within their
brains.
