Parapsychotic grief, theory of mind and the concept of the soul.
The ability to deceive is regarded as the best evidence of the cognitive ability separating humans from other primates. An alternative would be to look at the concept of the soul, which has an archetypal significance, emerging in various geographically remote cultures over the course of history. The soul will be an elusive but not an impossible concept to study with neuroimaging. In parapsychotic grief the decreased may appear to the bereaved person without these hallucinations being considered as indicative of mental illness. If this is the sort of normal human experience which has led to the emergence of the belief in the immortality of the soul it may be a useful starting point for defining the neuroanatomical basis of souls which do not necessarily seek to deceive. As the human prefrontal cortex expanded and developed and strove to understand mental activity derived from subcortical structures the human attained an awareness of his own mind which has been construed as a separable insubstantial but indestructible entity. This idea would be bizarre if it were not archetypal and therefore must be closely linked to the development of the human central nervous system.
Corrigan
F M
FM
Argyll and Bute NHS Trust, Argyll and Bute Hospital, UK.
D006117:Grief; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000502:physiology; D006212:Hallucinations; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010268:Parapsychology; D013140:Spiritualism / Q000523:psychology