Birth to three matters - Communities and Local Government

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRAINAND MIND?Astington’s (1999) fundamental interest isin the development of a theory of mindand, in explaining the research thatdevelopmental psychologists undertook inthis area in the late 1980s and early 1990s,she begins by considering how the mindcan be explained and defined. Astingtonstates that the answer lies in ‘everyday,commonsense psychology’ or ‘beliefdesirepsychology’ which refers to theways in which a person explains andpredicts another’s actions by thinkingabout his or her ‘beliefs, desires emotionsand intentions’ (Astington 1999:2).Astington adds that thoughts and feelings(or states of mind) originate in the brainbut she differentiates between the two,saying that the mind and the brain are notone and the same. (Astington 1999:3) Shealso discusses philosophical ideas aboutthe mind’s existence, as does Greenfield(1997) who differentiates between mindand brain and reveals that the ‘seeminglyindividual and unchanged mind iscompletely at the mercy of the physicalbrain’ (Greenfield 1997:84). In herconcluding thoughts, she adds that themind may be, ‘the evolving personalaspect of the physical brain’ and‘consciousness brings the mind alive’(Greenfield 1997:149).Gopnik et al (1999: 175) devoteconsiderable attention to the mind/brainsynthesis and state that, ‘studying babies’minds…is studying babies’ brains and is,so far, the most productive method ofstudying their brains’, but they devoteindividual chapters to ‘Children’s Minds’and ‘Children’s Brains’. They also draw ananalogy between the human mind anda computer, and say that little is knownabout how we feel conscious experiences,but it is known that,‘babies begin by translating informationfrom the world into rich, complex, abstract,coherent representations. Thoserepresentations allow babies to interprettheir experience in particular ways and tomake predictions about new events.Babies are born with powerfulprogrammes already booted up andready to run’ (Gopnik et al 1999: 142)Scientists are themselves in differentminds about whether there is a differencebetween brain and mind. Maybe if we usea computer analogy we can, for now, thinkof the brain as the hardware and the mindas the software.THE BRAIN, ATTUNEMENT AND AUTISMAttachments or emotional bonds formedbetween children and other people havebeen shown to be partly ‘environmentexpectant’(genetically programmed) and‘environment-dependent’ (requiringexternal stimuli) (see chapter 3). This does,of course, have implications for a varietyof issues relating to the feeling andexpression of emotions. The part of thebrain responsible for emotional and socialresponses is located in the amygdala,which, if damaged, leads to profoundemotional changes in a person. Eliot (1999:293) reports that ‘amygdala damage or116 EDUCATION ANDSKILLS B I RT H T O T H R E E M AT T E R S