Curatorial Note

Why do we think? Why do we dream? Why are we emotional beings? Is intelligence and the ability to think and feel restricted to humans?

Researchers have grappled with the inner workings of the human mind – from mapping billions of neurons to trying to understand the intangible expressions of thought and consciousness. We have experimented on the human brain with drugs, hypnosis, genetic techniques and more. The mind plays its own tricks through optical illusions, déjà vu, delusions and hallucinations. Combined with the imagination and hormones these manifest in intriguing behaviours.

Neuroscientists, chemists, doctors, psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, systems analysts - each take us a few steps closer to unravelling the enigma of the psyche. It is worth noting that much of laboratory research to understand the human mind, in fact, is carried out on other living beings who exhibit degrees of decision making, planning and emotion.

The mind is inextricably implicated in our perception of the world and our experience of it. Our actions, informed by this perception, continue to shape the world. Our thoughts and emotions likely create a sense of wellbeing or a lack of it, yet we do not fully understand the biological or psychological or social underpinnings of our intellectual being.

The future of the mind could be stranger than fiction – weaponizing of emotions, extra sensory perception, prediction of criminal behaviours or the wiping out of traumatic memories – nothing, it seems, is impossible. Even machines need not be exempt – as we continue to replicate the human mind in-silico – from thinking or experiencing emotions in a manner similar to humans.