From Particle to Mind - Part 5

The Conscious Mind as an Electro-Magnetic Field

The Traditional Scientific view of the Brain

The material universe as viewed by physicists is said to be in an equilibrium state and in a continuous (analog) and stable form. This has the advantage of making it susceptible to mathematical (arithmetic) calculation and logical reasoning. This approach is by definition linear and on its own, finds difficulty in explaining the analog/digital, non-equilibrium, spontaneously asynchronous, complex and creative system which is the brain.

The fundamental difference between physics and biology is the capacity of living systems to follow different paths under different initial conditions, and in different contexts, while continuously predicting the results (for better or for worse – Free Will).

The objective world evolves to its highest level of complexity in the form of human consciousness which is able to impose its will in a systematic and determined way on the very fabric of nature, including itself.

According to current neuro-scientific thinking, an individual’s capacity to communicate arises through its capacity to send and receive information, its preferred pace, its sensitivity to any incoming influence, and the total influence exerted by all other individuals to a greater or lesser extent.

The fact that our senses allow us to perceive the world and universe in a coherent way must mean that they are tuned into the harmonics of the cosmos at the most fundamental level.

As neurons wire together networks of communication, they need to know not only which other neurons to connect to, but at what time, and in which direction they should send signals. Such polarity within a single neuron is reflected by its shape or form (morphology).Multiple short dendrites receive signals, and the single longer axon sends signals. The brain has three types of signal transmission, mechanical, electrical (wiring of axons and dendrites) and chemical (neurotransmitters at the synapse). Chemical signals diffuse into the extra cellular substrate, reaching receptors in neuronal cells located far away from the origin of the signal.

It is estimated that there are on average 100 Billion neurons in the brain along with between 10-50 times that number of glial cells which make up the grey matter surrounding the brain, and which were thought previously to only have a structural significance. These glial cells are now believed to make a significant contribution to the brains processing capability. In addition a typical neuron has between 1000 and 10000 specialised endings known as synapses which deal with the transmission of essential chemical neurotransmitters.

So the type and number of cells, their relative proximity to other cells of the same type, their method of communication across a complex and continuously evolving network of cells and systems and environments, all play a crucial role in determining the structure and process of the brain. Putting all this together makes for some pretty awesome results. Even on the most conservative basis, it has been estimated that we end up with more bits of information to process than there are particles in the known universe. (10 to the power 200 for the universe, and 10 to the power 500 for the brain).This makes the problem of computing the nature of intelligent life a virtual impossibility, at least by any known standards. So what is going on?

Perception – The received wisdom

Perceptions are that part of a system that can receive communications from the environment and can be interpreted in the brain. Senses are the physiological methods of perception, the faculty through which the external world is apprehended.

“In ordinary human perception, people perform the miracle of recreating within themselves - in their interior faculties - the exterior world. This miracle is the work of the nous poietikos or of the agent intellect - that is the poetic or creative process. The exterior world in every instant of perception is interiorized and recreated in a new manner. And in this creative work that is perception and cognition, we experience immediately that dance of Being within our faculties which provides the incessant intuition of Being.”
M. McLuhan, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters”, p. 80.

Rather than attempting to contemplate every bit of information that enters the range of our sensory capacities, and in order to prevent “information overload,” our brain makes probabilistic predictions (based on Bayesian principles) and instant value judgements. Many of our instant judgements occur at the deeper, unconscious and emotional levels of the brain, in the region of the hippocampus and amygdale (Emotional Reflexive), which are connected to our early survival mechanisms (fight, flight and freeze) as individuals, and later as a group or species through reproduction.

Certain visual information can be processed unconsciously in a parallel brain pathway, by bypassing the visual cortex (which is needed for conscious awareness) as in blindsight. The eyes contain nerve projections that lead directly to a key brain structure for empathy and matching emotions, the Orbitofrontal area of the Prefrontal Cortex (OFC) which is coordinated by the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. (ACC)

Mirror neurons react to observations, intentions and feelings, not thinking. They affect spindle cells Fig.1 which are four times larger than other brain cells, allowing high velocity transmission. By changing the meaning of what we perceive, we alter its emotional impact.

“pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment”
Marcus Aurelius – Roman Emperor 1st Century AD

Humans have evolved a sense of self that is unparalleled in its complexity. It has been found by Lieberman 1. that an area of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex has a high concentration of uniquely shaped neurons called spindle cells which appear to play an important role in processing information. Heatherton 2. thinks that the human self network may have evolved in response to the complex social life of our ancestors. For millions of years hominids lived in small bands, cooperating to find food and sharing what they found.” The only way that works is through self control,” he says. “You have to have cooperation, and you have to have trust.” And these kinds of behaviours, he argues, require a sophisticated awareness of oneself.

Humans are also uniquely skilled at predicting the actions, and inferring the intensions of others. Scientists have found that the areas and networks of the brain which deal with thinking about others seem to contain areas concerned with thinking about the self.

The sense of self aspect of the network is underdeveloped in young children, and has to be learned over a period of years. Leiberman says, ”They have conflicts in their self-concepts that don’t bother them at all, ‘I’m still the same person. ’They just don’t seem to connect up the little pieces of the self-concept. They’ve got the stuff, but they’re not applying it like adults do.”

1. Leiberman Conflict and Habit: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to the Self. Matthew D. Leiberman and Naomi i. Eisenberger in Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity, Vol.4. Edited by A. Tesser, J.V.Wood and D.A. Stapel. American Psychological Association (in press).

2. Heatherton A Self Less Ordinary: The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and you. C. Neil Macrae, Todd F. Heatherton and William M. Kelley in Cognitive Neurosciences 111. Edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga. MIT Press, 2004.

The brain makes certain unconscious assumption about the structure and process of the natural world, continually striving to impose order and form (through acts of free will) on its often chaotic character and appearance.

Even the simplest act of observation involves judgement by the brain; it even fills in missing bits of information in the eyes blind-spot, where the optic nerve pierces the retina. The capacity to focus our attention on an object or subject often means we are able to dismiss inconsistent, superfluous or irrelevant detail.

The pineal gland, is sensitive to light, is reddish-gray and about the size of a pea (8 mm in humans). It is located just rostro-dorsal to the superior colliculus and behind and beneath the stria medullaris, between the laterally positioned thalamic bodies. It is part of the epithalamus. It produces melatonin, a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and photoperiodic (seasonal) functions. It provides an interesting example of a structure which might play an important role in the unconscious perceptual process, but at a much higher and deeper level.

“So Jacob named the place Peniel, ––"face of God"––for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved” (Genesis 32:30).

Signals from the eyes are initially processed in the primary visual cortex at the back of the brain. However, cortical areas dedicated to vision are densely interconnected, but two parallel pathways offering a more general nature of organization are evident. They are known as the what pathway of the Temporal lobe, which deals with recognition of objects, and the where pathway of the Parietal lobe, which deals with motion, spatial orientation and localization.

The messages from the different senses converge in the angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus in the parietal lobe, where we construct our “body image.” These two gyri were originally fused as one gyrus (the inferior parietal lobule) in apes. With the advent and importance of intermodality (cross sensory) interactions, however, in humans the lobule grew to the point where it split in two.

The Electromagnetic Viewpoint

A key question in terms of the relationship between consciousness and the material world is, can consciousness influence the material and processes of physical reality?

Professor William A. Tiller of Stanford University in his article Conscious Acts of Creation – The Emergence of a New Physics seems to think it can, both on an individual and collective level. He has carried out experiments for many years using what he terms Intention Imprinted Electrical Devices (IIED). He explains, “The IIED device becomes the host for a specific intention designed for a specific target experiment. This specific intention is “imprinted” into the host device via four very qualified humans acting from a deep meditative state. The device then acts as an effective surrogate for these humans, plus cooperating parts of the “unseen,” with respect to transferring this specific intention to the experimental site of the appropriate target experiment”.

An example would be causing a shift in the PH (acidity) of a given amount of purified water, in equilibrium with air. He states that, “by comparing the separate influence of two physically identical devices, one unimprinted and the other imprinted via his meditative process, he was able to demonstrate a robust influence of human consciousness on the water. Further, it was found that, by simply continuing to use an IIED device in the laboratory space for 3-4 months, the laboratory became “conditioned” and the state of that “conditioning” determined the robustness of the experimental result.”

Professor Tiller postulates the idea of “fields of consciousness” which seem to permeate a room filled with a well intentioned meditative group, which is reinforced and can be maintained by regular and sustained effort involving a combination of meditative states of focused attention and specific positive intention. To such an extent that eventually, even in the absence of the group the room can maintain its “conditioned effect for considerable periods of time.

He attributes this conscious influence on the laboratory space to the fact that, “we are changing the degree of order in the physical vacuum state of the room. This vacuum fills the spaces between all the atoms and molecules of the room as well as most of the space within all the atoms and molecules of the room.” He goes further in saying, “the vacuums normal state is postulated to be highly energetic, chaotic and completely random (disordered). Our IIED work suggests that human consciousness, specifically human intention, can interact with this vacuum “stuff” and alter its degree of order….. which in turn raises the electromagnetic gauge symmetry of the space so that any physical measurement in that space is comprised of two appreciably sized parts. One aspect is from our normal “direct-space” while its companion aspect is from the newly appreciated “reciprocal-space”. The former arises from dense electric, monopole, particulate structure in nature while the latter arises from fine magnetic, monopole, wave structure at the vacuum level in nature which, combined, comprise the apparent wave/particle duality concept that is the cornerstone of quantum mechanics.

This vacuum space is ordinarily thought of as empty space. However, science tells us that it is the space between all atoms and almost all of space within atoms and molecules which is estimated to contain in the region of -1094 grams equivalent of latent energy. This in simple terms means that the amount of vacuum energy latent in the volume of a single hydrogen atom is much, much more than all of the mass energy present in all of the planets and stars detectable within radius of 20 billion light years.

“For the appearances of the natural order, which are separate from each other in time and space, are in fact the manifestation of energies that inform all things and can be summoned to focus at will.”
Joseph Campbell - The Historical Atlas of World Mythology: The Way of the Animal Powers, Part I, p.93
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Professor Johnjoe McFadden from the School of Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Surrey in the UK believes our conscious mind could be an electromagnetic field.

“The theory solves many previously intractable problems of consciousness and could have profound implications for our concepts of mind, free will, spirituality, the design of artificial intelligence, and even life and death,” he said.

Most people consider "mind" to be all the conscious things that we are aware of. But much, if not most, mental activity goes on without awareness. Actions such as walking, changing gear in your car or peddling a bicycle can become as automatic as breathing.

The biggest puzzle in neuroscience is how the brain activity that we're aware of (consciousness) differs from the brain activity driving all of those unconscious actions.

When we see an object, signals from our retina travel along nerves as waves of electrically charged ions. When they reach the nerve terminus, the signal jumps to the next nerve via chemical neurotransmitters. The receiving nerve decides whether or not it will fire, based on the number of firing votes it receives from its upstream nerves.

In this way, electrical signals are processed in our brain before being transmitted to our body. But where, in all this movement of ions and chemicals, is consciousness? Scientists can find no region or structure in the brain that specializes in conscious thinking. Consciousness remains a mystery.

“Consciousness is what makes us 'human,' Professor McFadden said. “Language, creativity, emotions, spirituality, logical deduction, mental arithmetic, our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are all inconceivable without consciousness.” But what’s it made of?

One of the fundamental questions of consciousness, known as the binding problem, can be explained by looking at a tree. Most people, when asked how many leaves they see, will answer "thousands." But neurobiology tells us that the information (all the leaves) is dissected and scattered among millions of widely separated neurons.
Scientists are trying to explain where in the brain all those leaves are stuck together to form the conscious impression of a whole tree. How does our brain bind information to generate consciousness?

What Professor McFadden realized was that every time a nerve fires, the electrical activity sends a signal to the brain's electromagnetic (EM) field. But unlike solitary nerve signals, information that reaches the brain's EM field is automatically bound together with all the other signals in the brain. The brain's EM field does the binding that is characteristic of consciousness.

What Professor McFadden and, independently, the New Zealand-based neurobiologist Sue Pockett, have proposed is that the brain's EM field is consciousness.
The brain's electromagnetic field is not just an information sink; it can influence our actions, pushing some neurons towards firing and others away from firing. This influence, Professor McFadden proposes, is the physical manifestation of our conscious will.

The theory explains many of the peculiar features of consciousness, such as its involvement in the learning process. Anyone learning to drive a car will have experienced how the first (very conscious) fumblings are transformed through constant practice into automatic actions. The neural networks driving those first uncertain fumblings are precisely where we would expect to find nerves in the undecided state when a small nudge from the brain's EM field can topple them towards or away from firing. The field will "fine tune" the neural pathway towards the desired goal.

But neurons are connected so that when they fire together, they wire together, to form stronger connections. After practice, the influence of the field will become dispensable. The activity will be learnt and may thereafter be performed unconsciously.

One of the objections to an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness is, if our minds are electromagnetic, then why don't we pass out when we walk under an electrical cable or any other source of external electromagnetic fields? Professor McFadden’s answer is that our skin, skull and cerebrospinal fluid shield us from external electric fields.

I would suggest that it is the Double Helix structure behind the EM field that provides the robust architecture which shields the electrical impulses utilized by the neurons in the brain and plays a major role in maintaining the integrity of consciousness.

“The conscious electromagnetic information field is, at present, still a theory. But if true, there are many fascinating implications for the concept of free will, the nature of creativity or spirituality, consciousness in animals and even the significance of life and death.

"The theory explains why conscious actions feel so different from unconscious ones ¬- it is because they plug into the vast pool of information held in the brain's electromagnetic field,” Professor McFadden concluded.

(Reference: The paper “Synchronous firing and its influence on the brain’s electromagnetic field: evidence for an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness" by Johnjoe McFadden is published in the current edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, along with a commentary by Dr. Susan Pockett.) 16/05/2002

"Every thought, every twitch of your finger is an electrical event or series of electrical events. All the information that reaches you from the world, from the pattern of light, shadows, gets translated into a sequence of electrical impulses."
From a book written by Judith Hopper called The Three Pound Universe.

Morphic Resonance – Rupert Sheldrake

In his hypothesis of formative causation, he proposes that memory is inherent in nature, and that most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

It is based on the idea that in order to understand the development of life forms, known as morphogenesis, it is not enough to understand gene and protein expression and development. Morphogenesis also depends on organizing fields, what Sheldrake terms morphogenetic fields

He suggest that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. Morphogenetic fields are defined by Sheldrake as the subset of morphic fields which influence, and are influenced by living things.

“The term [morphic fields] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.”
Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past (Chapter 6, page 112)

Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. How are these fields inherited? He proposes that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.

The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be “stored” inside the brain. The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain through intention and attention.

Through morphic resonance, the patterns of activity in self-organizing systems are influenced by similar patterns in the past, giving each species and each kind of self-organizing system a collective memory. Habits are subject to natural selection; and the more often they are repeated, the more probable they become, other things being equal. Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts. We inherit bodily, emotional, mental and cultural habits, including the habits of our languages.

Schumann Resonance

Just as a tuning fork has natural frequencies for sound, the planet Earth has natural frequencies, called Schumann resonances, for electromagnetic radiation.

The Human Brain also has natural frequencies for electromagnetic radiation. It turns out that the Earth's Schumann resonances are "in tune" with the Human Brains's Alpha States and Theta States.

The fundamental frequency of the Schumann resonance is roughly the fundamental frequency of a spherical shell whose inside boundary is the surface of the Earth and whose outside boundary is the ionosphere, acting as a spherical shell electromagnetic waveguide cavity.

The fundamental frequency ought to be roughly the time it takes electromagnetic radiation to go all the way around the spherical shell.

Since the speed of light is about 300,000 km/sec and one cycle is the circumference of the Earth, which is about 40,000 km/cycle the fundamental frequency should be on the order of

300,000 km/sec
________________ = 7.5 cycle/sec
40,0000 km/cycle


A cycle/sec is just a Hz, so that 7.5 cycle/sec is 7.5 Hz. In other words, the natural frequency of the Earth at the boundary of the inner core is about 40 cycles/sec, which is at the upper end of the range of frequencies measured for the Schumann resonances: 7.8, 14, 20, 26, 33, 39 and 45 Hertz.

Therefore, the Schumann resonance frequencies correspond to the range of natural frequencies of the Earth from its surface to the boundary of its solid inner core.

The natural frequencies of the Human Brain are:
Beta waves (14 to 30 Hz),
Alpha waves (8 to 13 Hz),
Theta waves (4 to 7 Hz), and
Delta waves (1 to 3 Hz).

Alpha frequencies have been associated with meditation and relaxation.

Theta frequencies have been associated with dreamy, creative states.

The Beta and Alpha waves (8 to 30 Hz) seem to correspond to the
Schumann resonances: 7.8, 14, 20, 26, 33, 39 and 45 Hertz.

The 30 Hz high end of the Beta waves is roughly coincident with the frequency of cats' purrs: According to an 18 March 2001 article in the London Telegraph by David Harrison: "... the purring of cats is a "natural healing mechanism" ... between 27 and 44 hertz ... was the dominant frequency for a house cat, and 20-50Hz for the puma, ocelot, serval, cheetah and caracal. This reinforces studies confirming that exposure to frequencies of 20-50Hz strengthens human bones and helps them to grow. ... Almost all cats purr, including lions and cheetahs, though not tigers. ...".
What about the Theta and Delta Waves (1 to 7 Hz)?

The 1 Hz frequency of the Delta waves is 7.5 times lower than the 7.5 Hz natural frequency at the surface of the Earth. Since the radius of the Earth is about 6,400 km, the radius for a 1 Hz natural frequency is about 7.5 x 6,400 = 48,000 km.

Here are some natural frequencies that seem to correspond to the Delta and Theta waves of the Human Brain.

Plasma Sheet (opposite Sun),
inner radius = 60,000 km 0.8 Hz

Magnetopause (toward Sun),
radius = 60,000 km 0.8 Hz

Geosynchronous orbit,
radius = 35,000 km 1.4 Hz

Outer Van Allen electron belt,
outer radius = 25,000 km 2 Hz

Inner Van Allen proton belt,
outer radius = 12,000 km 4 Hz

Inner Van Allen proton belt,
inner radius = 8,400 km 5.7 Hz

As to the following frequencies:

Magnetopause
(opposite Sun), radius = 380,000 km 0.125 Hz

Plasma Sheet
(opposite Sun), outer radius = 380,000 km 0.125 Hz

Moon orbit,
radius = 384,000 km 0.125 Hz

It is interesting that 0.125 Hz is about 8 seconds per cycle, which is roughly the same period as the 5 second delay that has been observed between the onset of a 1 to 2 millitesla magnetic field (about 100 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field) and the first bursts of brain activity responding to the magnetic field.
(See Science 260 (11 June 1993) 1590.)


The microtubule structure of brains and other cells may be the key to phenomena such as consciousness.

Some experiments show connections between the brain states and resonant electromagnetic waves, raising the possibility that the Human Brain has evolved to be "in tune" with Planet Earth.

Dolphin and Human Brains may contain BioMagnetite that could give them an electromagnetic sense that could provide a link between Brains and many types of electromagnetic phenomena, including but not limited to Schumann Resonance Phenomena.

Inducing gamma waves in the brain

Gamma oscillations are high-frequency brain waves which reflect the synchronous activity of large interconnected networks of neurons, firing together at frequencies ranging from 20 to 80 cycles per second. They are thought to be crucial to consciousness, attention, learning and memory. Now, for the first time, MIT researchers and colleagues have found a way to induce these waves by taking advantage of a newly developed technology known as optogenetics which involves shining laser light directly onto the brains of mice.

The research helps explain how the brain produces gamma waves and provides new evidence of the role they play in regulating brain functions. The trick for inducing gamma waves was the selective activation of the "fast-spiking" interneurons, named for their characteristic pattern of electrical activity. When these cells were driven with high frequency laser pulses, the illuminated region of cortex started to produce gamma oscillations. "We've shown for the first time that it is possible to induce a specific brain state by activating a specific cell type" says co-author Christopher Moore, associate professor of neuroscience and an investigator in the McGovern Institute. In contrast, no gamma oscillations were induced when the fast-spiking interneurons were activated at low frequencies, or when a different class of neurons was activated.

The authors further showed that these brain rhythms regulate the processing of sensory signals. They found that the brain's response to a tactile stimulus was greater or smaller depending on exactly where the stimulus occurred within the oscillation cycle. "It supports the idea that these synchronous oscillations are important for controlling how we perceive stimuli," says Moore. "Gamma rhythms might serve to make a sound louder, or a visual input brighter, all based on how these patterns regulate brain circuits."

Danah Zohar - Fröhlich Pump System

Evidence was found by Herbert Fröhlich in England of the existence of condensed phase states in living tissue similar to those referred to as Bose-Einstein Condensed (BEC) phase states. This "Fröhlich Pump System" as it is known is simply a system of vibration of electrically charged molecules to which energy is pumped. As long as these molecules vibrate, they emit electromagnetic photons. Fröhlich demonstrated that beyond a given threshold, any amount of additional energy pumped into a system, makes molecules vibrate in unison, makes them, in other words, resonate in an ordered way. If this is increased, it takes the molecules to the maximum ordered stage of a condensed phase, the BEC phase. Previous to his discovery these were thought to exist only in superfluids and superconductors -- at very low temperatures. These correlated phase states in our cellular structures, Danah Zohar suggests, provide the physical basis for the phenomena we know as consciousness.