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How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?

The neural systems’ electric activities are fundamental for the phenomenology of consciousness. Sensory perception triggers an information/energy exchange with the environment, but the brain’s recurrent activations maintain a resting state with constant parameters. Therefore, perception forms a clos...

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Autores principales: Déli, Éva, Peters, James F., Kisvárday, Zoltán
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9601684/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37420518
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e24101498
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author Déli, Éva
Peters, James F.
Kisvárday, Zoltán
author_facet Déli, Éva
Peters, James F.
Kisvárday, Zoltán
author_sort Déli, Éva
collection PubMed
description The neural systems’ electric activities are fundamental for the phenomenology of consciousness. Sensory perception triggers an information/energy exchange with the environment, but the brain’s recurrent activations maintain a resting state with constant parameters. Therefore, perception forms a closed thermodynamic cycle. In physics, the Carnot engine is an ideal thermodynamic cycle that converts heat from a hot reservoir into work, or inversely, requires work to transfer heat from a low- to a high-temperature reservoir (the reversed Carnot cycle). We analyze the high entropy brain by the endothermic reversed Carnot cycle. Its irreversible activations provide temporal directionality for future orientation. A flexible transfer between neural states inspires openness and creativity. In contrast, the low entropy resting state parallels reversible activations, which impose past focus via repetitive thinking, remorse, and regret. The exothermic Carnot cycle degrades mental energy. Therefore, the brain’s energy/information balance formulates motivation, sensed as position or negative emotions. Our work provides an analytical perspective of positive and negative emotions and spontaneous behavior from the free energy principle. Furthermore, electrical activities, thoughts, and beliefs lend themselves to a temporal organization, an orthogonal condition to physical systems. Here, we suggest that an experimental validation of the thermodynamic origin of emotions might inspire better treatment options for mental diseases.
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spelling pubmed-96016842022-10-27 How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions? Déli, Éva Peters, James F. Kisvárday, Zoltán Entropy (Basel) Article The neural systems’ electric activities are fundamental for the phenomenology of consciousness. Sensory perception triggers an information/energy exchange with the environment, but the brain’s recurrent activations maintain a resting state with constant parameters. Therefore, perception forms a closed thermodynamic cycle. In physics, the Carnot engine is an ideal thermodynamic cycle that converts heat from a hot reservoir into work, or inversely, requires work to transfer heat from a low- to a high-temperature reservoir (the reversed Carnot cycle). We analyze the high entropy brain by the endothermic reversed Carnot cycle. Its irreversible activations provide temporal directionality for future orientation. A flexible transfer between neural states inspires openness and creativity. In contrast, the low entropy resting state parallels reversible activations, which impose past focus via repetitive thinking, remorse, and regret. The exothermic Carnot cycle degrades mental energy. Therefore, the brain’s energy/information balance formulates motivation, sensed as position or negative emotions. Our work provides an analytical perspective of positive and negative emotions and spontaneous behavior from the free energy principle. Furthermore, electrical activities, thoughts, and beliefs lend themselves to a temporal organization, an orthogonal condition to physical systems. Here, we suggest that an experimental validation of the thermodynamic origin of emotions might inspire better treatment options for mental diseases. MDPI 2022-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9601684/ /pubmed/37420518 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e24101498 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Déli, Éva
Peters, James F.
Kisvárday, Zoltán
How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title_full How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title_fullStr How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title_full_unstemmed How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title_short How the Brain Becomes the Mind: Can Thermodynamics Explain the Emergence and Nature of Emotions?
title_sort how the brain becomes the mind: can thermodynamics explain the emergence and nature of emotions?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9601684/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37420518
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e24101498
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