ABSTRACT
Précis: This chapter primarily reviews articles published in the journal Science. The subjects presented seem to me to have some potential relevance for psychoanalysis, by helping us better bridge mind/brain perspectives. The focus shifts throughout from cognitive controls, to emotional systems, or to the fact that cognitive and emotional systems of mind/brain are more closely interconnected than we on realize, just as the two memory systems called implicit and explicit are likely connected in complex, interesting ways, even if these connections sometimes elude us. In this chapter I begin with research on corollary discharge. Next I take up reports on important revisions of the neuron doctrine. I then add a discussion of some innovative neuroscientific conceptions of what controls development, citing recent work in molecular biology on protein pathways. Some of these efforts to bridge mind/brain may seem far fetched, and perhaps they are; others, however, say those connecting corollary discharge with brain mechanisms for transferences and their recognition, may seem more useful. At each step, however, a sincere effort is being made to plumb our understanding of things in fundamental 130terms. This effort especially concerns the phenomenon of emotion, which we generally take for granted, yet to understand it better we may require a more novel definition of emotion to really make sense of what emotion represents to our species.
