Do we have a soul? A neurological assessment.
Okay so I wrote this thing and I need to talk about it.
A patient who had brain surgery in 1953 to stop his seizures and then could never form a new memory again? His memory lasted seconds. Seconds. Every moment of his life after that surgery was a new universe with no past.
A railway worker in the 1800s, tamping iron shot straight through his skull, survived somehow but became a completely different person. Impulsive, inappropriate, couldn't control his own behaviour. His friends said he was no longer himself.
Then there's a musician. Got a herpes infection that spread to his brain. Lost decades of memories. Can't form new ones. But he still remembers his wife. Every time he sees her, it's like seeing her for the first time in years. That's simultaneously the most heartbreaking and beautiful thing the brain does.
Here's the thing though: if every single component of what you'd call a "soul", your memories, your personality, your emotions, your consciousness, your perception of reality itself, can be destroyed, altered, or induced by damaging or stimulating specific parts of the brain...
...then what exactly survives after death?
I wrote a full article about this. It covers clinical cases, brain stimulation studies (did you know you can make mice hunt by stimulating their amygdala?), sensory deprivation research, the James-Lange theory of emotions, and whether a brain in a jar could have a mind.
It's an opinion piece. It acknowledges it rests on materialist premises. It acknowledges that spiritual frameworks hold meaning that science can't address. But it asks: what does the evidence actually tell us?
Read it here: [LINK]
And then come argue with me about it because honestly I'm not even sure myself.