There is pretty good evidence that people’s personalities and memories are very much linked with their brain structures. Traumatic brain injury patients can undergo loss of mental function and changes in personality and/or temperament.
This all points to mental function, emotion, and personality being inseparable from brain cells, tissues, and structures in a very physical way. I would dare posit that identity is dependent on our brains.
I think given neuroscience’s establishment of identity and personality in the brain, the notion that when we die, we’re going to see and meet all the people we loved in our lives is not a given. Maybe in the “mirror” soul or “screen play” or “maturing soul” we could remember things of our life, but it seems to me that God is so far beyond anything humans can comprehend or perceive with our physical senses that I’m not sure we’ll ever answer what happens when we die.
When we speak of memories, personality structures, attachments, we are speaking of information, yes?
I know of nothing in theology or neuroscience or personal experience that dictates that information can only be stored in one location.
In point of fact, everyone reading these words has proof right in front of them. You are reading this on a computer or other electronic device which stores information (memory), which was entered by a human operator, you or another. But you still retain much of that same information within your own consciousness.
Neuroscience itself points towards this direction with the holographic (non-localized) theory of memory storage within the brain.
To stretch an analogy, your physical body could be considered your computer. You operate it, you make the choices of what gets entered and what you want the computer to do. You can store information on the computer. Your brain is perhaps the processor, your personal Pentium chip, that sends the information throughout the hardware of the computer and directs the components based on your will.
Crush the computer’s processor chip, and the computer ceases to function. The memory (or memories) stored within the computer may be lost if the memory chips are destroyed, or get old and cease to function effectively. Pull the plug on the CPU so no power goes to the computer, and it “dies.” The computer can be damaged or infected with a virus that causes it to behave erratically or uncharacteristically, or which can make it unable to access memory. This can be frustrating to the computer’s operator, but does not affect the personality of the operator, or the ability to access parallel memories stored within the mind (soul) of the computer’s operator.
The entire computer can cease to exist, yet the owner of the computer still exists. The memories and lessons learned from his or her life and the attachments and loves remain, even if possibly not as complete as the information stored in the memory chips. He or she will retain what is needful.
The computer itself cannot function without the operator.
This seems quite clear to me.
There may be a need, based on our design as a hylemorphic unity, for the physical body to have its own separate storage for memories, knowledge, and emotions. What our body does affects the mind (one of the reasons Catholics pray with our whole bodies - we stand, we kneel, we sit, we press our hands together, and also one of the reasons why sex “matters” to our immortal soul, for good or bad), just as what our mind does affects the body (our blood pressure rises, our bodies become sexually excited, our pulse slows - all depending on what thoughts we are having), and the body physically “learns” from its stored memories - we learn things in different ways based on what physical state our body is in at the time we learn those things. Lessons learned in a hyperadrenalized state are more easily accessed when in a hyperadrenalized state, which is a teaching mode frequently utilized in military and police training (and in a negative mode, can be responsible for PTSD). Lessons learned in a relaxed and tranquil state will be most easily accessed in a relaxed and tranquil state. Lessons learned in a state of religious exaltation will be brought forward again when in state of mind. Neuroscience has shown that specific regions of the brain become active when operating in these mental states, just as specific hardware within my computer becomes activated when I send it a command to perform a specific function. It is possible, even likely, that our physical bodies, including the brain, may need to have ready access to physically-stored memories and feelings to do its day-to-day job of processing information, responding to stimuli, and making decisions.
It would seem likely that there is a continuous feedback loop between our physical bodies and our souls, with each interacting with the other. We are not spiritual jockeys riding a meat puppet, after all, but a unity of the two, which is why our true nature will be realized at the end of time with the reunification of body and soul.
