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Despite some astonishing advances in neuroscience over the past twenty five years towards a

better understanding of how the brain works, which includes a better understanding of specific

neural circuitry, how the different regions of the brain process various kinds of stimuli, and isolating

the various components and physical mechanisms of the brain (ex. Neurons, dendrites, synapses,

etc.) researchers and clinicians still struggle in their ability to predict and explain many features of

human behaviour and cognition. Despite empirical, theoretical and technological innovations such

as the data that is now available from functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology, the

behaviour and most of the mental lives of individuals is still well beyond the capacity of the models

in this field to explain or predict with any degree of accuracy.

There are a number of reasons for this, the primary ones that will be explored in this essay

are first, the fact that although we have acquired a highly detailed understanding of certain regions

and components of the brain, its broader function is still much of a mystery. This is because much

of research has historically taken a reductionist approach, which has yielded vast amount of

information about specific components that make up our neural architecture, but it has contributed

little to our understand of how the systems in the brain are networked to produce experience. For

instance, the subject of qualia, those very subjective phenomenal qualities of experience that in many

ways drive and motivate us, are for the most part immune to reductionist neuroscientific advances.

The current level of knowledge about how the brain works is far too coarse to account for the

individuality of how experience shapes the finer and complex functions of the mind. Second is the

complex and emergent nature of consciousness. It may be that even a perfectly accurate model of

neural electro-chemical processes may not adequately capture the requisite type of information

necessary to make sense of psychological phenomena. While neural imaging technology has helped

us gain valuable insights into the correlative aspects of mind-brain connections, specific causal
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evidence is substantially less robust (Koch, Massimmi, Boly & Tononi, 2016). Bridging this gap, the

so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is a persistent problem.

Emergence is the process whereby a system acquires new and fundamentally different

properties and preferences at a higher level of organization. For instance, quantum mechanics may

explain with perfect precision the behaviour of the elementary particles in the universe, but

Schrodinger’s equations cannot tell us what chocolate tastes like. Taste is an emergent property,

there is a lack of conceptual overlap between the two frameworks that prevents one from describing

in any meaningful way the other. So too may consciousness be thought of as an emergent property

of neural activity, the requisite conceptualizations required to grapple with impulses, thoughts and

emotions may not be strictly reducible to identifiable neural circuitry. There may be a need to import

emergent-level models from psychology or psychiatry.

When we observe the brain with the sophisticated instruments available today, we are still

observing only the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) rather than “consciousness” itself

directly (Tonono & Koch, 2015, 2). The question of how and why electro-chemical activity in our

neural structures are associated with and give rise to subjective, conscious experience is the so-called

‘hard problem’ of consciousness mentioned above. And it is precisely this fundamental issue that

plagues the applicability of neuroscience to complex human behaviours. To make predictions about

human behaviour from a neuroscientific view, starting with the brain and attempting to then draw

conclusions about the mind, and this includes questions about free will, crime the development of

many mental illnesses and others, is essentially a bottom-up approach to explaining and predicting

aspects of human behaviour and cognition. In this enterprise one is inevitably confronted with the

‘hard problem’ of consciousness, that has been an essential dead end for decades (Tonono & Koch,

2015, 5). The alternative, being the Integrated Information Theory (ITT) approach which takes a
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top-down view of the problem, while some argue offers greater applicability and predictive power,

still has little to say about the specific ways in which neural-imaging data can help predict specific

kinds of behaviours or make sense of free will.

Researchers have developed primarily quantitative approaches and models on the basis of

fMRI data as well as demographic and behavioural variables (Buckholtz & Faigman, 2015, R863),

and use actuarial techniques to try and make reasonable predictions. However, while these methods

have proven more reliable than clinical judgements, the neural complexity of human behaviour and

the small effect-sizes attached to individual causal factors limits the ability of such models to make

predictions on a case-by-case basis with high degree of reliability (Buckholtz & Faigman, 2015,

R863). The sheer complexity and multi-variability of human behaviour is such that even the most

advanced and nuanced models account for only a fraction of the complexity and networked effects

of all cognitive variables.

The notion that better-quality data from neural imaging technology will lead to better models

that reliably predict specific behaviours suffers from the assumption of a deterministic view of the

brain – mind relationship (Roskies, 2012, 1022). There is much philosophical speculation that

indeterministic events and processes play a role in mediating the brain – mind relationship, such that

conscious experiences, thoughts and feelings, do not unfold along the sort of deterministic paths

that would allow for precise modelling. This is the libertarian conception of free will. Furthermore,

even if the brain does function according to fully deterministic mechanisms, this still does not

necessarily mean that neural imaging data and models obtained therefrom will necessarily yield

reliable predictions about human experience and behaviour. The complexity of the brain activity that

gives rise to experience may simply be impossible to model with sufficient accuracy to make reliable

predictions (Roskies, 2012, 1022). Thus, regardless of whether the brain functions according to
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strictly deterministic or indeterministic ways, it may be beyond our ability to model the mechanisms

with a practical degree of accuracy.

Another challenge is the fact that high-level processes such as attention, policy commitments

and other factors that arise in our environments and through our interactions affect our decision-

making processes in ways little understood from a mechanistic perspective. Our higher-level

executive processes that involve conscious deliberation are difficult to map into any kind of model

that postulates a deterministic or mechanistic view of the brain-mind relationship. For instance,

there is little understanding of how executive functions in the brain control and act on subservient

sub-systems. Without a better understanding of this, it is difficult to try and predict the outputs into

consciousness of the brain when the higher-order, top-down functions of the system are

unexplained.

In summary, there are a number of reasons why the best available research in contemporary

neuroscience falls short of offering reliable models for making sense of the practical issues of free

will, behavioural choices, mental illness and other features of the ‘mind’. The current state of

understanding regarding causal relationships between neural activity and subjective experience is

insufficiently developed. The mechanistic relationship between higher-order executive functions and

neural sub-systems is not clear. The extent to which the brain-mind connection is a deterministic or

indeterministic one is in dispute. While we have achieved success following the reductionist

approach and have learned much and identified specific components of our neural architecture, the

sheer complexity and networked nature of brain function has so far proved difficult to model with

any real accuracy. These challenges result in the relative inability of our mechanistic models that

describe neural activity to apply to the potentially emergent phenomenon of consciousness.

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Bibliography

Buckholtz, J., Faigman, D. (2014) Promises, promises for neuroscience and law. Current Biology, Vol.

24, Iss. 18. R861-R867.

Koch, C., Massimmi, M., Boly, M., Tononi, G. (2016) Nature Reviews, Vol. 17, 307-321.

Roskies, A. (2012) How does the neuroscience of decision making bear on our understanding of

moral responsibility and free will? Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 22, 1022-1026.

Tononi, G., Koch, C. (2015) Consciousness: here, there and everywhere. Philosophical Transactions B,

1-18.