Body with a Mind or a Mind with a Body?

Between Sinew and Spirit: Are You a Body with a Mind or a Mind with a Body?

An animated journey to the center of the self.

BY MARIA POPOVA...............................

In this lovely animated inquiry from TED-Ed, inspired by Isaac Asimov’s I Robot(public library), Maryam Alimardani traces the mind-body problem from Descartes’s foundational ideas to the disorienting findings of neuroscience to explore the ever-elusive locus of self.

Complement with Walt Whitman on the paradox of the self, pioneering immunologist Esther Sternberg on how our minds affect our bodies, and PTSD researcher Bessel van der Kolk on how body and mind converge in the healing of trauma, then revisit other illuminating TED-Ed animations exploring why we fall in love, what makes you you, how melancholy enhances creativity, why some people are left-handed, what depression actually feels like, and why playing music benefits your brain more than any other activity.