Research Programme on the Human Mind

The Academy of Finland’s Research Programme on the Human Mind will involve basic research into the human mind and its neural mechanisms in different cultural and social contexts. The research will be applicable in tackling topical issues and challenges, such as learning, brain and mind development, ageing, health and sickness of the human mind, drugs and addictions, globalisation, refugee problems, cultural encounters and collisions as a result of conflicts, the electric media, and community planning.

Background

The human mind is studied in a number of research and art fields and from many different perspectives. It is indeed a challenging task to combine all these different perspectives into a fruitful interaction to create an overall and more profound picture. Understanding the human mind requires deep and broadminded cooperation between the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences. Finland has excellent potential to reach the world top within this multidisciplinary research that studies the human mind and its neural mechanisms in a cultural and social context. Finland traditionally has a strong knowledge base in research focusing on the human mind.

Objectives

The aim of the research programme is to consolidate the scattered research field, bridge the gaps between different scientific disciplines, promote the national and international networking of research, and secure the further progress of the field at a high international level. Another aim is to support multidisciplinary research on the human mind, increase our knowledge of how a healthy mind will develop and how to support and cure an unsound mind. Research on the human mind can also generate significant public benefit and increase people’s wellbeing and quality of life. Besides stepping up basic research, the research programme is also expected to contribute to issues such as teaching practices for children and adults, diagnosis and treatment of social disruptions, care of older people with memory problems and rehabilitation of patients with psychic or neurological disorders. Mental illnesses and learning difficulties cause significant social costs and human suffering that could be diminished. Research within the programme will also respond to the challenges posed by lifelong learning.

Themes

Mind development, growth: biological, neurophysiological and developmental psychological understanding of mind development; learning and its preconditions and obstacles; education, critical attitude and ethics; systematic intelligence.

Mind, the environment and language: relationships between mind, brain, body and the environment; relationship between mind, language, worldview and values; linguistic and non-linguistic thinking and communication.

Mind and health: premises for healthy mind development; understanding and supporting an unsound/abnormal mind; effect of different treatments on the mind; brain and mind development; tailor-made rehabilitation; ability to test realities and its disorders (e.g. hallucinations); altered states of consciousness (sleep, hypnosis, substance abuse effects).

Social interaction and decision-making: social behaviour and human interaction; individual and group decision-making; emotions in decision-making.

Experiences: aesthetic and ethic experiences and interaction; art and science and the human mind; creativity; meditative and religious experiences; responsibility.

Forms of intersubjectivity and their cultural maintenance: misanthropy, philanthropy, anthropophobia; manipulation, the aesthetics of power and politics; confronting the unfamiliar; controlling and regulating one’s own mind.

Brain imaging: development of mathematical and computational methods that facilitate the measurement and modelling of human activity (incl. the brain, autonomic nervous system, speech, eye movements, facial expressions, motion paths, learning) in as natural conditions as possible and with the most lifelike stimuli possible.

Cooperation

The research programme will provide research-related synergy benefits between many of its thematic areas and certain Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation, in particular with the Strategic Centre for Health and Well-being (SalWe Ltd). Internationally top-level research is conducted by several foreign research institutes, and it would be good to seek programme cooperation with them. ERA-NETs and Joint Programming also provide interesting potential and avenues for international collaboration and networking.

Scope

The programme’s research themes will cover researchers from a wide range of research fields: educationalists, psychologists, sociologists, religion scholars, social scientists, humanists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, brain imaging scientists – hundreds of researchers at the national level. Overall, the programme’s network of researchers is estimated to comprise some two hundred researchers.