Neurowaves

The connection of the brain to the mind remains one of the science’s post persisting mysteries. Time is a key feature of our world and universe as described in physics. Picking up on this insight, Georg Northoff proposes a new approach to understanding the relation of the brain and the mind. In Neurowaves Northoff demonstrates how the brain’s own inner time and its dynamic are key in constituting the mind as manifest in mental features like self, consciousness, thoughts, and their changes in mental disorders. He proposes that the entire world is structured by waves of time, and the passing of the world’s waves through our brains – neurowaves – are the basis of the mental properties that enable us to navigate our experiences. While neurotypical people can ride the waves of the world with relative ease, Northoff explores cases in which the brain’s construction of velocity leads to temporary difficulties, from mania to depression to autism. Fascinating examples show how the brain’s neural waves transform into mental waves – time and its dynamic are shared by brain and mind as their ‘common currency.’ Such a temporal-dynamic view provides an intimate neuro-mental connection and, more generally, a novel revolutionary approach to the perennial question of the mind-brain relationship. Illustrated by vivid examples from different areas of the physical and biological world, Neurowaves provides captivating insights and an innovative, entertaining unravelling of the temporal connection of brain and mind.

Neurowaves demonstrates how the brain’s inner time and its dynamic are key in constituting the mind as manifest in mental features like self, consciousness, thoughts, and their changes in mental disorders. Northoff proposes that the world is structured by waves of time, and the passing of the world’s waves through our brains – neurowaves – are the basis of the mental properties that enable us to navigate our experiences.

Georg Northoff is professor of neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy at University of Ottawa, and the author of numerous articles and books.