Circuitos neuronales de las 五神 wu shen: fundamentos de neurociencias en las actividades espirituales

Abstract

Spiritual activities are concepts from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). According to TCM, each organ controls a spiritual function or activity. These activities are considered as the most ethereal in each of the components of organic phenomenology. Based on González's approaches in 2009, this paper proposes that spiritual activities correspond to neural pathways related to processes studied by neurosciences. In this sense, shen could corresponds to consciousness (including the level of alertness as well as the content of the thought); hun to the pathways related to the processing of the emotions and the activity of default network mode; yi to the processes involved in cognition (memory and learning); po with the oscillations that allow the renewal and maintenance of the processes, and zhi with processes could be related to motivational behaviors (yang aspect) and with the pathways of pleasure and reward (yin aspect).