The Embodied Mind

Thomas Verny is an academic clinical psychiatrist who is also the author of bestseller The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. In this brilliant and ground-breaking new book, he draws on scientific findings in physiology, genetics and quantum physics to articulate a new view of the mind as fundamentally embodied rather than ‘enskulled’ within the brain, which has been the predominant model in our patriarchal and hierarchical culture. The corresponding social structures are vertical, and this same centralised, top-down system was adopted in medicine whereby ‘the brain is at the top, the rest of the organs such as the heart, liver, etc. are below, then there are other tissues and cells, etc.’ Verny’s biological understanding corresponds to the intrinsic interconnectedness found in physics whereby ‘many physiological systems operate simultaneously and in synchrony in our bodies: the brain, the heart, the gut and all the other organs do not function separately from each other.’ Indeed, it is the organ-centred assumption of separation that not only drives research agendas, but has given rise to distinctive specialities where specialists rarely exchange views - nor do they understand bodily processes as fundamentally systemic.

As the author states in the introduction, ‘our embodied mind is not the old enskulled one. It is an extended mind that relies on the intelligence of all the cells in our body that contain specific bits of information, micro-memories. All memories, consciousness, and the mind emerge from this linked sentient network.’ He criticises exclusive focus on cortical neurons ‘as the only important cells in information processing, cognition, and memory storage.’ Memory is in fact a body-wide web, and intelligence is exhibited ‘in a wide range of systems well beyond the traditional central nervous system.’ (p. xiii) Moreover, lived events are imprinted on our cells and tissues, ‘and a large number of these effects may be passed onto our children and grandchildren’ through trans-generational inheritance. Genes are no longer destiny as a central control mechanism, and heredity is in fact ‘a complex, networked information system’.

In developing his argument, the author synthesises a great deal of cutting-edge research with great clarity, summarising each stage as he goes along. In terms of personal epigenetics, belief systems can change the way our bodies function and upregulate gene expression according to the way we live and the choices we make. Readers will find their understanding of memory considerably extended beyond standard cortical storage models. Theoretical approaches have to be capable of explaining such phenomena as hydrocephaly and the extraordinary capacities of savants, which are sometimes brought on by brain injury. Memory is in fact distributed and cells are themselves intelligent, forming ‘an essential and necessary substrate of the embodied mind.’ (p. 72) The author goes on to explain the intelligence of single celled organisms, the microbiome and slime moulds before showing how his hypothesis can explain the preservation of memory in regeneration, hibernation and metamorphosis. In our own case, we have mutually supportive somatic and cognitive memory systems, as well as muscle memory applied as practical skills.

The next chapter asks if heart transplants are in some sense personality transplants, and begins with some inspiring quotations about the heart before moving on to an account of heart biology and its generation ‘of the body’s most powerful and most extensive rhythmic electromagnetic field.’ Some readers will be familiar with previous work on heart transplants and the possibility of transfer of cellular memory. The author cites a number of case histories associated with personality transformation consistent with that of the donor. The question here is whether there is also a direct influence of the deceased personality at work along with cellular memory. Mainstream cardiologists dismiss these phenomena as unimaginable although their own explanations – and I agree with the author – ‘are insufficient to explain the findings’.

We now arrive at the central issues of consciousness, free will and the brain-mind relationship where the mainstream position, as readers are well aware, is materialist reductionism. This view is being challenged on a number of fronts, including placebo expectations, NDEs, children who remember previous lives and ESP more generally, which the author terms ‘sympathetic communication’. He considers the approach advanced by Hameroff and Penrose, as well as the rise of quantum biology and the theories of Stuart Kauffman relating to what he calls the ‘Poised Realm’. Like many thinkers involved in the University of Virginia volumes on consciousness and parapsychology, the author concludes that ‘the brain acts as a transceiver of mental activity; i.e., the mind can work through the brain, but is not necessarily produced by the brain.’ (p. 155) Hence, ‘the mind is both dependent and independent of the brain and the rest of the body’, a view that is ‘supported by experimental evidence from the very cutting edges of academic scholarship.’ In this context, ‘consciousness and free will are qualities of the mind and the mind is more than the brain.’

In his final chapter, the author observes that ‘only through the relentless scrutiny, questioning and challenging of orthodoxies can science progress’ and in this book he has produced a revolutionary and internally coherent systemic framework that synthesises empirically supported research from diverse fields. He shows that no organ is an island unto itself, that cellular memory is well-documented, and that all the cells in our bodies form a ‘dynamic, linked, sentient network’ that gives rise to the embodied quantum mind. This approach fundamentally questions the self-refuting but widespread deterministic view of the mind as an epiphenomenon of the brain. The author’s proposal that mind is both dependent on and independent of the brain and the rest of the body provides a common framework for both mainstream and more extended approaches. This radical book deserves to be widely read and seriously considered by the scientific community.