Bryan Appleyard volunteered for a brain scan and, while inside, recounted finding out about his father's death:
During my account of his death, my proprioceptive system was very active. Proprioception is all to do with body position and movement and is, in fact, a kind of sixth sense that allows us, for example, to know where our arms are in the dark. The finding suggests some strong movement component in the memory, which puzzles [the neuroscientist]. It does not puzzle me. The scan, I decide, picked up my feeling of jumping out of my body at the moment I was told of his death. Suddenly I am impressed by what a giant magnet found in my head.
In response, Frank Wilson compares the brain to a telephone receiver:
To think there must be a "you" inside the brain seems to me to be somewhat on the order of assuming there is a "you" in the telephone receiver. The telephone is a device that enables me to hold a conversation with someone else who is someplace else. Neither of us is in the receiver. Perhaps the brain – perhaps the body – is a communications device, both receiver and transmitter, and that what the scan reveals is the pattern of its activity, not the source of it.
The Dish 