I close my review of this article with the following excerpts and personal comments:
“These studies are consistent with views in which cognition recruits sensorimotor cortical regions. . . . We acknowledge that, as with all passive neural recording studies, ours cannot establish a causal role for these neurons in tactile cognition. . . . The precise neural correlates of tactile imagery are unknown, but evidence suggests that both imagined and actual touch may engage the same internal mental representations. . . . during the imagery task, no stimulus was delivered to the participant. . . . The response during the imagery task lends support to the idea that despite the lack of peripheral input from the hand due to the participant’s SCI [spinal cord injury], the brain maintains an internal representation of tactile sensations.”
Again, the investigators do not specifically mention a proposed role of the immaterial cognitive mind in the recruitment of “sensorimotor cortical regions”. Was this via a generation of wave forms by the mind that interacted with synchronous modular wave forms that are transmitted through neural synaptic networks as specified codes within spike trains of action potentials? [This process has been addressed in previous blog posts.] The “same internal mental representations” engaged by both imagined and actual touch likely represent neural memory codes derived by lifelong learning, also discussed in my books and blogs. These would be the “internal representation of tactile sensations.” I refer the reader to the sections in my books that consider the supplementary motor area and how the immaterial mind interacts with it in both hemispheres.
In summary, we are seeing in more recent neurophysiology articles that cognitive imagery in the absence of the delivery of stimuli to study subjects “recruits” neural synaptic networks to transmit semantic, meaningful neural codes. I submit that these kinds of studies are increasingly pointing to an unacknowledged role of the immaterial mind in interaction with the material brain. Please review the articles I cite and review so that you can come to your own “take-aways.” My search goes on.
Finally, since the Holy Spirit indwells those who are in repentance with faith in the Truth of the Gospel, it is reasonable to expect that the Holy Spirit communes with us Mind-to-mind in ways that are, at least in part, identical to what is being learned about cognitive communication in humans, giving credence to dualist interactionism.