On the nature and evolution of the human mind

Organisms are faced during their lives with an immense variety of environmental challenges and organism specific problems, for which they have to find adequate solutions in order to survive. Problem solving, in other words, is an essential dynamic survival mechanism, evolved to cope with disturbances in the ecological equilibrium. With the evolution of sensory systems as adaptations to specialized environments, the capacity to process large amounts of sensory information increased and, with that, the power to create more complex models of reality. The object of this review is to present current perspectives on the organization and evolution of the human brain and to examine some of the design principles and operational modes that underlie its information processing capacity. Furthermore, the neural correlates of mind—the set of cognitive faculties involved in perceiving, remembering, reasoning and deciding—will be explored. It will be argued that in primates, and especially humans, the complexity of the neural circuitry of the cerebral cortex is the neural correlate of higher cognitive functions, including mind-like properties and consciousness.