In my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man through Neural Synaptic Networks, I share Dr. Penfield’s comments about what he called “the brain’s highest mechanism.”

“The highest brain mechanism . . . should itself understand, and reason, and direct voluntary action, and decide where attention should be turned and what the computer [brain] must learn, and record, and reveal on demand.”

I posit in my book that Penfield’s highest brain mechanism interacts with the will, intention and attention of the individual Self. . . . Penfield refers to the highest brain mechanism as the mind’s executive. By some means the executive accepts direction from the mind and passes it on to various mechanisms of the brain conforming, I suggest, to the liaison brain proposed by Eccles and Popper that serves as the resource for neural codes specified for certain neural functions. Penfield goes on to say that decisions come from the mind, and “in conformity with the mind’s decision, the highest mechanism sends neuronal messages [encoded]to the other mechanisms in the brain,” again in conformity with with Eccles’ and Popper’s liaison brain. . . . Penfield posits that the messages go as neuronal potentials arranged in a specified pattern [linguistic neural codes] to the appropriate target grey matter, requiring the subject’s mind to interpret what the pattern represents in terms of meaning and purpose.

But the mind has energy. The form of that energy is different from that of neuronal potentials that travel the axone pathways. (Wilder Penfield)

In Chapter 12 Penfield makes the following statements:

By taking thought, the mind considers the future and gives short-term direction to the sensory-motor automatic mechanism. But the mind, I surmise, can give direction only through the mind’s brain-mechanism. It is all very much like programming a private computer. The program comes to an electrical computer from without. The same is true of each biological computer. Purpose comes to it from outside its own mechanism. This suggest that the mind must have a supply of energy available to it for independent action.

I discuss Penfield’s proposed “energy” in my two blogs posted above entitled, “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two. I discuss the suggestion he made above extensively in my two books. I update the content presented in my books in specific blogs on this website.

In Chapter 1 of Dr. Penfield’s book the author wrote, “. . . that the engram of experience is a structured record within the brain.”

The structure of the record consists of linguistic neural codes about which I speak extensively in my two books. The codes are maintained in memory, and we are learning how dynamic the memory of the brain is, consisting of spike trains of action potentials retained in specific regions of the brain to be called upon by intention, attention and will.

I continue with another excerpt from the Foreward to Dr. Penfield’s book:

“. . . the mind must be viewed as a basic element in itself. One might call it a medium, an essence, a soma. That is to say, it has a continuing existence.”

I continue with an excerpt from the Foreward to Dr. Penfield’s book written by Charles W. Hendel:

“[Dr. Penfield] became more and more convinced that the mind is something in its own right, that it did things with the mechanisms at hand in its own way, that it had an ‘energy’ of its own. . . . [He aligned himself] with the prophets, the poets, and the philosophers who have emphasized the spiritual element in man.”

Charles W. Hendel wrote the Foreword for Dr. Penfield’s book. He said, “. . . I find the last pages are an eloquent, convincing justification of your hypothesis and belief that mind has a being distinct from body, though intimately related to and dependent on body. . . . mind is a very distinctive reality.”

Quoting Dr. Penfield, “Throughout my own scientific career I, like other scientists, have struggled to prove that the brain accounts for the mind. But now, perhaps, the time has come when we may profitably consider the evidence as it stands, and ask the question: Do brain-mechanisms account for the mind? Can the mind be explained by what is now known about the brain? If not, which is the more reasonable of the two possible hypotheses: that man’s being is based on one element, or on two? . . . But it is, I believe, a mystery that science will solve some day. In that day of understanding, I predict that true prophets will rejoice, for they will discover in the scientist a long-awaited ally in the search for Truth.

In his preface to his book, Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain, Dr. Wilder Penfield shared his experience listening to a lecture by Sir Charles Sherrington as a medical student in Oxford. He said, “I realized that there was a thrilling undiscovered country to be explored in the mechanisms of the mammalian nervous system. Through it, one might approach the mystery of the mind, . . . there was always a restless wondering within me about the working of the brain and its relation to mind. . . . the primary duty of each of us is to give an account of his own intriguing expeditions into this undiscovered country and to pass on his own record accurately and hopefully to others who follow on these explorations that have now become a fateful pilgrimage.

In the blogs to follow I will show how prescient the neurosurgeon, Dr. Penfield, was in elucidating the interaction between the mind and the brain through his studies conducted on live patients.

I am redirecting our attention to the writing of Dr. Wilder Penfield, a notable neurosurgeon who died in 1976, whose writings profoundly influenced my research into dualist interactionism through his book, Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. Published in 1975 shortly before his death it served to redirect research into brain function which had reduced the workings of the mind to the physiological functions of the brain, called materialist reductionism which survives to this day. We shall find his comments revealing of the beauty God created in the human spirit, soul and brain. He “devoted much of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul” [taken from Wikipedia]. Along the way, I plan to insert summaries of current articles from neuroscience I review in my ongoing research. Thank you for your interest.