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It seems like brain nutrition is always on the back burner. Most brain related issues occur as a result of the lack of nutrition.
Kevin

thanks for the info :)

In order to ensure processes like consciousness and thought can occur, we need the billions of neurons in our brain to constantly be firing...right?

As I was reading an article on an msnbc website (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19751440), my beliefs about needing the brain for proccesses of the mind were starting to be questioned. The article was about a new life-saving protocol used in people who have suffered from heart attacks, whose hearts have stopped beating and whose cells have been deprived of oxygen. Ninety-five percent of the time these persons pass away. This new protocol in use at the University of Pennsylvania takes victims whose hearts have been stopped for several minutes and induces hypothermia. These persons are clinically dead, but hypothermia has shown to be effective in bringing them back to life!

This is exceptional in that it saves lifes that would otherwise not have a good chance of survival as well as it allows death to be studied. Where is the mind when the brain is not functioning?

Below is a short piece from page 5 of the article that touches on some interesting ideas backed up by real life experiences:

"Brian Duffield, then 40, a salesman in Tucson, collapsed in the shower after a swim. Luckily for him, he was on the campus of the University of Arizona, whose hospital uses a cooling protocol similar to Penn's. "I was there one minute and the next thing I know, it's a few days later and people are telling me I was dead and came back," says Duffield. But Duffield's memory and intellect and personality all returned intact from his brush with death, as did Bondar's. This is, on some level, deeply mysterious. We experience consciousness embedded in time, a succession of mental states continually re-created in our brains, even during sleep. But when the brain shuts down, where does the mind go?"

And another piece from page 6:
"If you look at a brain cell under a microscope, it can't think. Why should two brain cells think? Or 2 million?" The evidence that the mind transcends the brain is said to come from near-death experiences, the powerful sensation of well-being that has been described by people like Anthony Kimbrough, a Tennessee real-estate agent who suffered a massive coronary in 2005 at the age of 44. Dying on the table in the cath lab during angioplasty, he sensed the room going dark, then lighter, and "all of a sudden I could breathe. I wasn't in pain. I felt the best I ever felt in my life. I remember looking at the nurses' faces and thinking, 'Folks, if you knew how great this is, you wouldn't be worried about dying'."

If people like Anthony Kimbrough can still produce thoughts while being clinically dead, does this mean that the mind can exist without the brain?

I'm not so sure that my views that the brain and mind are one entity are going to be changed. Up to date science has shown us that we need the brain for processes of the mind. To make memories long term we need the hippocampus, to complete our daily tasks for example like brushing teeth we use the executive functions of the frontal lobe to ensure we perform the steps of brushing teeth in the correct order. We are constantly analyzing and thinking whether we realize it or not, and science has shown us that specific pieces of the brain are most likely responsible for specific processes. It hasn't been proven that the mind and brain are separate up-to-date findings lead me to believe so.

To be unbias and play devil's advocate, I will admit that at one point people thought the earth was flat and at the center of the universe. Current technology guides our current beliefs, and as technology advances so might what we believe to be true. I appreciate the study of near-death experiences as a new piece of evidence in figuring out the relationship between the mind and body.