The subject of neuroscience - the study of brain activity in response to certain stimuli - is cropping up all over my recent reading. The brain has become the focus of increased interest on the part of neuroscientists and researchers in a wide range of fields, everything from musicology to philosophy, ethics, economics, and theology.

Brain imaging technology is allowing scientists to watch the electro-chemical activity of the brain when certain stimuli are presented to it aurally or visually. By tracking the energy in different sections of the brain, researchers are gaining a better understanding of which sections of the brain seem to be involved in the various activities that make up our daily lives.

These findings are very interesting. They show that certain sections of the brain can be counted on to be active under specific conditions - when one is thinking, for example, or using one's imagination, or creating something. At the same time, the different parts of the brain work together like a symphony orchestra, bringing the benefits of many different chemicals into any particular brain function, and even compensating for one another when necessary.

In some ways neuroscience is threatening to crowd out other, more traditional, areas of humanistic studies, such as philosophy and ethics. This should not surprise us, neuroscientist Richard Restak writes in the December 2, 2010 issue of The American Scholar. He asks, "Why would we expect to reach persuasive conclusions about the nature of our inner and outer worlds without reference to the one organ that enables us to explore and understand them?"

That the brain should be regarded as "the one organ" which is key to understanding "our inner and outer worlds" is not surprising in a secular and reductionistic age such as ours. We must try to understand how and why we do the things we do, and that answer must be crafted in purely material and scientific terms.

The Christian's response to the findings of neuroscience will be appreciative but guarded - appreciative, because much in the way of truly useful observation is being done; guarded, because the Christian understands that there is more to the inner being of humans than the electricity and chemistry of the brain.

In some ways neuroscience is beginning to sound like the new phrenology, that now-discredited 19th century "science" which taught that mental function could be determined from the shape of one's cranium. Neuroscientists are, as it were, merely taking phrenology "indoors" - looking not on the external contours and dimensions of the cranium, but the internal and hidden ones of the brain.

The Christian will insist that we cannot hope to understand why we do what we do apart from taking into consideration the spiritual aspect of the human person. We are more than brain function, more than mind. The spirit, or soul, of a person includes, with the mind, both the heart - the seat of affections - and the conscience - the guardian of values and priorities. The brain in some ways can indicate the activities of these, but not completely, just as it cannot completely account for or explain our mental functions.

But modern science, with its materialist bias, will not be able to help us here. Without the insights of theology, philosophy, poetry, aesthetics, and other "non-scientific" areas of study, we will not be able to gain a fuller understanding of human beings and their motivations, aspirations, and needs.

Neuroscience has an important contribution to make to understanding the nature of the human person. But it must not be the only voice at the table.

Additional related texts: Proverbs 4.20-27; 1 Corinthians 2.11-13; Ephesians 4.17-24

A conversation starter: "Do you think that, in our inner selves, human beings are more than chemicals and electricity interacting in our brains? Is there more to us than just material processes?"

T. M. Moore