Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field

Are our thoughts made of the distributed kind of electromagnetic field that permeates space and carries the broadcast signal to the TV or radio. 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 neurones.

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? The answer is that our skin, skull and cerebrospinal fluid shield us from external electric fields.

“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.

The University of Surrey is one of the UK’s leading professional, scientific and technological universities with a world class research profile and a reputation for excellence in teaching and research.

(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.)

At least it can be said that electromagnetism inherently performs an algorithm in propagating.

I believe that the brain evolved while excluding significant external EM fields. By paying attention to the timing of signal components picked up by different antennas, an array of antennas can focus on a selected area to the exclusion of others, and a similar process may be used by the current carriers of the brain as they propagate and receive internally-generated EM energy.

I think that consciousness is dependent on the degree of effective complexity in the neural wiring, and I think that free will is what consciousness has during free time, when no ideal or pressing mental pursuit is apparent.

Thanks for the headsup. Again for anybody interested in these questions, the main starting point for comprehending human consciousness is Julian Jaynes "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" which is available in paperback from Barnes/Noble.

The question of consciousness also involves the question of the origin of language, spoken and otherwise. My own take on this one resides on Bearfabrique.

There was originally an electrostatic component to the manner in which the human mind functioned and the greater prevalence of things which we would call psychic or paranormal phenomena in recent prehistory are thought to have been enabled by this more potent electrostatic field. Some of Al DeGrazia and Hugh Crossthwaite's writings on electricity and antique religious practices can be downloaded in PDF format from Bearfabrique.

Well, since someone has to do it....

I did.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

“Language, creativity, emotions, spirituality, logical deduction, mental arithmetic, our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are all inconceivable without consciousness.”

That's not really true. Either that, or Professor McFadden doesn't have quite the right understanding of "consciousness". Computers can be programmed with surprising capabilities that, more and more, can pass for all these things that he describes. But it would still be a stretch to call them "conscious". Consciousness is that which can't be described objectively - for example, there's no way to describe sensations of color, sound, pain, emotion, to any being that hasn't experienced any of these things. These are the things that constitute consciousness.

I thought this was posted a few weeks ago. Perhaps it was a sub-reference, but there was some discussion. It's a weak hypothesis, that is to say, obvious, adding nothing, and explaining less. Parapsychologists like this kind of thing.

So for complete protection, when I put on my tinfoil hat I should also fill my mouth with pennies and stick nails up my nose?

More seriously, I do understand about the radiation. In fact, an Xray would be blank if part (but not all) of the radiation were NOT absorbed by the tissue it passes through, which means that electromagnetic energy is deposited in those tissues.

Of course, EM energy exists somewhere within a spectrum extending from very low frequencies through the radio frequencies, heat, light, Xray, and gamma radiation. We can detect and characterize energy within virtually all of this range, we know that some of it has physiologic effects, that some EM signals are generated and used by the body, and that many of these can be detected externally.

But the signals we have found are pretty crude, and nobody has figured out, for instance, how they could be decoded to reveal my name, rank, and relationship to God (or to my wife, for that matter.)

And if I ever need to have an MRI (exposure to extremely high static and oscillating magnetic fields), I'll have to find out if my insurance pays for treatment of raving, ranting liberalism, just in case!

Don't worry, I've had three MRIs of the brain (to monitor a pituitary microadenoma) and I'm still a Freeper! :-)

Don't worry, I've had three MRIs of the brain (to monitor a pituitary microadenoma) and I'm still a Freeper!

(with humor) Good, I feel better now.

(with concern, and best wishes) I hope you feel better now, as well.

On the Basis of Your "Invasive ElectroMagnetic Insults" Alone, the "Concept" of "Mind" HAS to be Far more Impervious to "Radiation" than we previously Surmized!

Even our "Best Minds" are STILL BAFFLED by the Concept of "Human Intellect!!"

WHAT FUN!!!

Doc

Of course, this really is a very important, serious topic, overflowing with philosophical, scientific, and religious meaning, and perhaps I ought to be addressing it with more weight, but as presented it seemed to call for a lighter touch.

On the other hand, I really believe that some of those "best minds" are far too willing to believe that understanding the brain is all that is required for understanding the mind. Just as we have found that DNA chemistry may not be enough to completely account for how the body works - Protein chemistry may be the details in which that devil resides - so consciousness may require a whole lot more than just mapping neuron connections.

You might be onto something.

I went in for a brain x-ray one day.

Next thing I remember is resigning as a speechwriter for Senator Biden and logging on to Free Republic.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Isn't chemistry an 'electron kinda thing'?

As is most everything on earth. But the EM field they imagine is in addition to the chemistry inside the brain. The active EM field might even extend outside the brain structure somewhat, which is why we wear our foil hats sometimes even at home, to keep outside EM forces from modifying our own EM fields. Ha! You probably thought it was a joke.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.