Do you believe in a human soul/spirit as a separate entity from the brain?

Research in brain function is isolating, one-by-one, centers of the human brain that control various motor functions and higher level activities. For instance, there is a specific area that controls focusing the two separate eyes on a single point near the observer. Damage or temporarily disable that portion of the brain, and you see double, a common result of a blow to the head. Another portion controls the fattening and thinning of the lenses in our eyes. Disable it, and you cannot bring objects into clear focus if they are either nearer or further than the focal point of the relaxed eye. Most of the world looks fuzzy.

The hippocampus controls memorization. If it is turned off, we lose our ability to form new memories. The memory banks control our ability to use language, recognize familiar faces, to count, read and many other higher functions. Impairments in such basic functions are fundamental to personal identity.

It also appears that our very sense of self, the feeling of being an independent “I“ness watching the world through the viewfinder of our eyes, arises from activity within the prefrontal lobes, and draws on memory, language abilities, stored images, association, etc. Without listing all the mental capacities that have been mapped to a specific area of the brain, suffice it to say that other than going to heaven after death or becoming a disembodied haunt, there doesn’t appear to be much for a soul to do if it does exist. Not only that, if an area of brain is damaged or temporarily shut down by trauma, drugs, or electrical probes, there is no agent inside the head that can pinch hit for it.

So, without any evidence that it exists, without any evidence that it can do anything if it does exist, why do so many of us insist we know there is such an ethereal entity within us? If you think there is a soul and a spirit and that the two are separate, feel free to expound on why you believe that as well, and what you believe each of them separately does.