心脳問題のための「理論生理学」に向けて

抄録

One of the main topics of science in this century will be the mind-brain problem: how does the brain generate the human mind? Today various kinds of scientists and scholars join the discussion on this issue. Physiology has played a vital role to investigate the functions of the central nervous system, so physiologists are expected to contribute to the solution of the mind-brain problem, too. I will suggest a physiological framework to deal the mind-brain problem. The mechanism that generates the human mind seems to be beyond our comprehension probably because we lack some crucial understanding about the mind or brain, which could be brought by an unexpected finding during the experiments. However, it would be possible that we might fail to pick up such a finding because we do not known what kind of facts seem to be important for the mind-brain problem. Indeed, we cannot deny the possibility that we actually lost such a fortune in the past history. The loss might be prevented by the 'theoretical physiology.' This new kind of physiology should be specialized to focus on reviewing the meaning of experimental findings, developing innovative ideas to understand the nature of the mind and brain, and giving predictions to gain a new experimental finding in the near future. I will show some topics that could be good targets of 'theoretical physiology' for the mind-brain problem.
I appreciate the comments from Prof. Masahiro Sokabe. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S50 (2004)]