Questão 2516806

Why the brain-body connection is more

important than we think

Our brains aren’t flying solo; our emotions also come into play when we’re interacting with the world, new research finds.

1 The book The Biological Mind explores two opposing

ways of looking at the brain: one in which our bodies and the

environment we live in affect how we think and what we do,

4 and the idea that the brain is an isolated and all-powerful

entity.

The idea that our brains are like giant

7 supercomputers, orchestrating and determining everything

we do, has gained ground in recent years. So too have ideas

that a short time ago would have been regarded as science

10 fiction, like downloading the Internet directly to our brains,

or creating a new kind of human, one with enhanced

cognitive powers.

13 In his new book, Alan Jasanoff, professor of

biological engineering at MIT, explains why this “cerebral

mystique” creates a false dichotomy between the brain and

16 the body and ignores bodily influences on our psychology,

from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut.

Speaking from his office at MIT, he explained why

19 Red Sox legend Ted Williams had his body frozen in hopes

he could be thawed and re-animated someday; why changes

in temperature influence how much Dutch police shoot

22 their guns; and why the idea of downloading the Internet

directly into our brains is not a good one.

This book is largely about two opposite ideas: the

25 biological mind centered on the brain, in which influences

from the rest of the body and outside the body shape what

we think and do, and the cerebral mystique, a complex of

28 stereotypes and ideals about the brain, which tend to treat

it as an isolated and all-powerful entity, almost like a

modern version of the soul.

31 The problem with having a dualistic view of the brain

and its relationship to the physical body, and the physical

world, is that it makes us see ourselves as unnaturally

34 self-contained, both as minds and as autonomous agents.

In other words, we view ourselves as things that operate

from within, so we’re less sensitive to things that influence

37 us on the outside. The idea that the brain is a machine, an

abstract entity like a giant supercomputer, has been around

for a while, basically since computers. Other people have

40 used a quantum analogy for the brain. But the idea of the

brain as a computer is the most common in this day and

age.

Internet: <https://news.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).

Based on the text, judge the items below.

The word “within” (line 36) was used in the text as a opposition of “outside” (line 37).