Abstract

Unlike perception, which depends on a physical, here-and-now, contact with reality, thinking allows the mind to detach itself from the present situation in order to travel in time and space, to utilize past experiences with the aim to foresee the future, to solve theoretical and practical problems, to invent something novel, useful and beautiful. Today the millenary interest of philosophy and the centenary one of psychology for the subject have been joined by the aspiration of the neurosciences to discover the roots of thought in the structure and function of the organ which by general intuition is indispensable for thinking, the brain. The legimitacy of this aspiration is supported by the fact that even the present-day philosophers and psychologists discuss thought and other mental entities with ample references to the viewpoints offered by the advances in the neurosciences. This essay aims at illustrating some contributions of the current understanding of cerebral organization and its evolutionary history to the psychological study of thought and its relations with consciousness, memory and language.