December 2016

Although this question is essential for psychiatry, for example, has only a philosophic answer. On one hand, it’s impossible to switch off the human Ego like any other mental function and see how the body works afterwards. On the other hand, the neurobiology is quite far from finding the sweet home of cogito among the brain structures. And finally, a question like that about cogito will remain unanswered due to its specific position. Let’s explain it with the help of some global constructions. After a human is born he or she becomes a person due to a complex process of upbringing.

Discontinuing unhealthy behaviors, such as overeating or drug use, depends upon an individual‟s ability to overcome the influence of environmental reward cues. The strength of that influence, however, varies greatly depending upon the internal state of the body. Characterizing the relationship between interoceptive signaling and shifting drug cue valuation provides an opportunity for understanding the neural bases of how changing internal states alter reward processing more generally. Seventeen cigarette smokers rated the pleasantness of cigarette pictures when they were nicotine-sated or nicotine-abstinent. On both occasions, smokers also underwent fMRI scanning while performing a visceral interoceptive attention task and a resting-state functional connectivity scan. Hemodynamic, physiological, and behavioral parameters were compared between sated and abstinent scans. The relationships between changes in these parameters across scan sessions were also examined.

Another thing is the philosophy traditionally uses cogito in a cognitive situation analysis. As a motto we’ll take the title of the founder’s of the American pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce’s, article How to Make Our Ideas Clear. The question the philosophers answer in the shortest and the simplest way can be put as follows. How can one prove the idea of a thing shaped in one’s mind complies with the original – an object working outside the mind? That’s the framework for Descartes’ cogito to be born as a primary condition for the knowledge.