From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue May 21 2002 - 10:37:39 MDT
<http://unisci.com/ticker.shtml>
Our 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.)
16-May-2002
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