The New philosophy

This article gives descriptive explanation between the correlation of mental illness and neurology. The author attempts explain these solutions using evidence from conflicting approaches which are the chemical imbalances and Freudian approach. Which coincides with the nurture nature debate? This article focuses on brain impairments that result in symptoms of mental illness. This theorisation is called Evolutionary Nero-psychiatry

The author distinguished the difference between a normal person who has free will to innovate movement of his motor muscles in relations to a person who has hysteria who is unable to wilfully move his leg or arm. A PET scan will show that both patients have the intention to move the arm or leg because the brain would show activation in the pre-motor cortex and ventromedial frontal lobes. However when analysing the anterior Cingular, results show that there is no activation with patient diagnosed with hysteria therefore suggesting that signal are being block in this area inhabiting the arm or leg from moving. Pervious research would suggest that this was due to psychological trauma, effecting that arm or leg as they were unable to detect any lesions in the brain. Now there are empirical evidences to suggest that the anterior Cingular is closely related to the limbic emotional centre giving plausible reasons why they may be an emotional connection.   

The writer also draws on other related theories such as Darwin perspective on evolution where the writer identifies that mental processes tend to coincide with physical movement rather than brain processes this enabled the conscious to feel that a command evokes the movement at the same time. Whereas the brain kicks in about a second prior to the commanded action. This therefore suggests that there is a innervated neural delay. This makes it easier for humans to understand and react to the world. Unlike those who suffer with Catard syndrome.

The structure of the articles is clear and understandable as it uses definitions, causes, theoretical explanations and examples to explain the disorder. Such as Capgras delusion this is when a normal person believes that his mother is an impostor this may be caused by an accident which led to head injuries. The theoretical argument is that the visual area is able to recognise the face however it is unable to show emotional significance therefore the patient reject the idea that there is mother as they are unable to produce a galvanic skin response which is a response that you get when you're shown s stimuli with emotional importance through sweating.

Catard’s syndrome is when all the senses are disconnected from the emotional centre in the brain; patients with this disorder may claim that they are dead. As they are unable to respond to the world and have any emotional ties. This relates to the authors theory that mind and matter are intertwined with each other and that they are two ways of experiencing the world as each of them complete itself.as a result if once missing may explain why some people experience derealisation and depersonalisation. This is when the world feels like a dream or person feels unreal. The mental process in the brain shows that the   anterior Cingular and parts of the frontal lobes in the brain become extremely active this then causes a temporary shutdown to the amygdala and the limbic emotional centre which suppress potential emotions, such as fear and anxiety. This also occurs with epileptic patients because during their seizure they are in dreamy state.

Schizophrenia are unable to identify the differences between images and ideas that are generated by thought and actual stimuli that are in the environment. The author demonstrates this through a written experiment where he tells the reader to use their left index finger to tap repeatedly on the right index finger to express how schizophrenic interpret information. Finding of experiments claims that the mechanism used to send the information to the motor centre is flawed resulting in patients claiming that someone else is controlling the actions.