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Relationship between brain and behaviour “multi-dimensional”

— Photo: R. Ravindran

ARGUING HIS CASE: Howard A. Ring, professor, Developmental Psychiatry Section, University of Cambridge, U.K., delivering the first Madhuram Narayanan Endowment Lecture in Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: By using epilepsy, one can start to look at some of the mechanisms that allow us to understand how activity in several brain areas lead to different manifestations of behaviour, said Howard A. Ring, professor, Developmental Psychiatry Section, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Attempting to make the link between brain activity and human behaviour using lessons from the study of epilepsy, Prof. Ring said there was no obvious one to one relationship between behaviour and underlying brain biology. He argued that the relationship between the brain and behaviour was multi-dimensional.

A scientific study of brain activity will establish links between activity in certain areas and different kinds of behaviour. By the same measure, an analysis of different kinds of behaviour will yield insights into what is going on in the brain, Prof. Ring explained.

Prof. Ring began his oration at the 1st Madhuram Narayanan Endowment Lecture, organised by the Neurosciences India Group at the Voluntary Health Services Hospital here, by positing the theory of the brain-mind interface. While dualist philosophers assert that the mind is a non-physical substance, quite separate from the body and the brain, the neuropsychiatrist’s approach is based on an acknowledgement that the brain is the organ of the mind; that the brain and the mind are one. Mental and physical events within the body and within the brain causally affect each other, he said.

For instance, he said, in the case of epileptic seizures, persons experience perceptual, emotional, and cognitive phenomena during an episode triggered by external stimuli. However, by using depth electrodes in a single brain region, it was proved that similar phenomena were being experienced, purely as products of internal brain activity, without the involvement of any external stimulus.

Again stating that the brain basis of psychopathology was unclear, Prof. Ring pointed out, however, that epilepsy was associated with a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, including depression, irritability, psychosis, confusion, anxiety and behaviour disturbance occurring before, during, in between and after seizures. This is proof that epilepsy has a clear psychiatric co-morbidity and certain anti-epileptic drugs are associated with a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, he added.

N.S. Murali, secretary, VHS, honoured Prof. Ring with a shawl and a citation. S. Janaki, medical superintendent, VHS, Prof. Krishnamoorthy Srinivas, chairman-emeritus, Institute of Neurological Sciences, and Sasikala Kannan, chief, Clinical Services, The Institute of Neurological Sciences, also spoke.

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