Mind and brain

What is mind? Where is mind? These are difficult questions. It is acknowledged that mind is associated with brain. Then, where the mind is existed in the body? When we ask someone the existence of mind, they indicate the center of the chest, revealing the heart. Recently, advanced technology can give these unknown answers. If we could know the brain function, the reflection of one's mind could be observed. The emotion, behavior, cognition etc. are the reflection of mind, those are associated with brain function. This is a wonderful discovery of biomedical engineering, that one technological device can reveal the imaging of mind. Positron emission tomography technique (PET) is the scanning device, that can reveal the imaging of mind. How does it work?
This equipment has been used for more than two decades in biomedical imaging. Scanning is possible after administration of radiopharmaceutical drug through venous or arterial route. After emotional experiences, if one person is administered the radiopharmaceutical drug (i.e., glucose analogue) and is scanned the whole-brain by PET machine after 45 minutes, his emotion can be visualized as theree dimensional images (3D-images).

Autonomic function

Today, I would like to demonstrate about autonomic function of humans and it's importance. To have the primary idea about about autonomic function is important. There are two systems such sympathetic and parasympathetic. In normal physiological state, sympathetic and parasympathetic should be equal to stabilize the autonomic function. In general term, sympathetic is excitatory and parasympathetic is inhibitory. However, there is some variation between two systems in different conditions. As for exmpale, stress is an impact factor to cause disorganization between two systems. It is thought that stress incresaes the sympathetic activity and relaxation initiates the parasympathetic activity. It is also assumed that meditation for example initiates the parasympathetic activity.