I was planning to publish a new post regarding an evaluation of David Pearce’s consciousness proposal. A comment from James Cross stopped me in my tracks however. I’ll get to that post later because James linked to an article about a paper which details something that I consider very interesting.
Apparently scientists have implanted two tiny 64 pronged electrodes into speech areas of a woman’s brain. This woman is fine cognitively, though mouth muscle degeneration won’t let her speak. So while she’s trying to speak a computer transcribes the signals detected from these electrodes into words that are about 76% accurate. Thus with simple language rules the computer can get her words pretty close, and with a speed of 62 words per minute already. Apparently natural English is spoken at around 160 words per minute.
The truly interesting part of this to me is that these scientists may actually be detecting her EM field consciousness itself! Theoretically when we choose to say the words that we do, these thoughts exist as synchronous neuron firing which feeds back to the right neurons to force the proper muscles to speak those words. Even if their methods are still quite half-assed, that’s what I think these scientists have been detecting — an element of consciousness itself!
This is the link to the article:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/08/brain-implant-speech-als.html
This is the link to the August 23, 2023 paper itself:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06377-x
I’ll email McFadden to see if there’s anything that he’d like to say about this, and of course if so then relay it here…
Consciousness as an Electromagnetic Field 
There is a lot of similar stuff out there like this. Some of it is even fairly old. Wilder Penfield could do substantial alteration of consciousness simply by stimulating neurons.
“Of his 520 patients, 40 reported that while their temporal lobe was stimulated with an electrode they would recall dreams, smells, visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as out-of-body experiences.[32] In his studies, Penfield found that when the temporal lobe was stimulated it produced a combination of hallucinations, dream, and memory recollection”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilder_Penfield
I think that was from the 1950’s.
Detecting patterns in firings to produce speech would just as easily support any view whatsoever that says neuron firings are critical to consciousness. So, that would include almost every scientific theory.
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I’m not sure that the Wilder Penfield stuff quite addresses my understanding of McFadden’s theory. It seems more in the vein of “Here are some things that can be done to the brain which affect consciousness”. It shouldn’t validate or refute a given theory unless that theory gets into those sorts of things. McFadden’s theory doesn’t that I know of.
What intrigues me with the implanted EMF sensors to text experiment, is that McFadden’s theory may indeed predict what’s being found here. I didn’t address particulars in the post but consider this:
Surely most of what the brain does is not about creating consciousness, but rather about functioning as an effective non-conscious computer. Here the EM disturbances associated with general neuron firing should essentially just be noise that isn’t a functioning part of the operations. Furthermore this extraneous noise should tend to get combined together through effectively random constructive to destructive interference. So I doubt that the test subject’s sensors are picking up this sort of thing to derive what she wants to say. What might those sensors be detecting that isn’t just noise?
When neurons fire in synchrony their firing energies constructively interfere to create stronger energies that should thus be less affected by general firing noise. If her detectors were effectively using these energies to be trained up on what she was trying to say (25 – four hour training sessions from which to associate brain EMF with the 39 phonemes of English speech), then I could imagine success if consciousness does ultimately exist as an EM field associated with the right synchronous neuron firing.
Let’s say that success were to continue and scientist were to then wonder if it’s because consciousness does exist in the form of an EM field associated with the right kind of synchronous neuron firing. That’s when I think they could take things the other way as well. Here they should be able to put EM field transmitters (rather than detectors) in someone’s head that are set up to simulate typical synchronous neuron firing. Does a given test subject report altered vision, hearing, thought, and so on given that these exogenous energies should interfere if McFadden’s theory does happen to be true? Who else has a theory which could be so validated or refuted? Of course the vast majority of them are simply unfalsifiable so I’m not all that worried about competition. Proposing falsifiable theories would display a health that these fields seem to lack.
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If you stimulate electrically parts of the brain with an electric current, it will cause neurons to fire which with increase the EM field they generate. But there is no way to know whether the alteration of consciousness was caused by the EM field, something else, or simply the neurons firing.
If you stimulate with an EM field parts of the brain, it will also cause neurons to fire. This is implicit in McFadden’s theory since the EM field is supposed to trigger neurons to fire. Again, we don’t know whether it is neurons firing by themselves, something else, or the EM field that is producing conscious experience.
Since electricity itself and the EM field are so related, there is no [edited] simple way to discover which one was the actual cause. There is feedback between the two in Mc Fadden’s theory.
I have an idea for research that might suggest a way to resolve this, but it requires some additional theory that involves some recent discoveries about vortices in neuron firing patterns. If the vortices are related to cognition as some have suggested, then we would expect to find them present for conscious experience. If the EM field is involved, we would expect the EM field to be stronger in the vortices than outside them.
Additionally, in phenomena such as blind sight, we seem to have some kind of processing taking place the visual cortex of which other parts of the brain seem to have some awareness, but the event or object never makes it into vision. Blind sight is produced by lesions in a particular part of the visual cortex. The theory would be that in normal vision, we would find the vortices with the increased EM field, but in blind sight, we would find similar neural firing patterns but the vortices themselves would be absent. In other words, the blind sight is caused by the lesions disrupting the ability of the visual cortex to create the patterns required for full visual recognition. There may be other neurological conditions that could be similar in this respect.
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Even if the vortex part isn’t correct, I would think we would [need] pockets of a higher EM field in a normal visual cortex vs. a visual cortex with lesions that produces blind sight.
That alone would be good evidence that at least the EM field is critical.
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If you like you can point me to some material on what vortices in neuron firing patterns are, though I do think I understand what you’re saying otherwise James. If it’s true that an EM field can cause neuron firing, you’re worried about how we determine if the EM field itself exists as consciousness, or rather if the neuron firing that an EM field causes merely results in consciousness. So even if we find that synchronous neuron firing is highly correlated with consciousness (and this is indeed what’s been found), maybe it’s not that these stronger fields exist as consciousness, but rather how they affect neuron firing in general?
Okay yes, and and it’s great that you’ve brought this up. The thing is, apparently in order for an EM field to cause a neuron to fire (technically known as “ephaptic coupling”), that neuron must be on the very edge of firing anyway. So the deciding field merely provides a slight push rather than sets things up in general. Thus from McFadden’s theory, consciously chosen muscle function isn’t done nearly as much as we might otherwise presume. The following would be a brief account from this perspective.
Theoretically brain based biological robots once had no consciousness, though when the proper synchronous neuron firing occurred, a primitive phenomenal experiencer emerged in that manner as an auxiliary form of potential function. Furthermore it must have chosen well enough in certain ways to be given more and more input elements (like vision and so on) from which to think and decide what it wanted to happen. But even in highly evolved human consciousness, I presume that the vast majority of what we do occurs non-consciously. Here we should merely take credit for things that are done automatically.
Observe that the only place that the conscious EM field is required to interact with the brain, is chosen muscle function. But how much of what you do, do you consciously decide to do? Maybe one percent? I find this difficult to say, but theoretically the brain sets up vast chains of potential firing and an EM field decider can cause a given chain to occur when that chain sits on the edge of possibly being set off. Theoretically the brain is set up to put these potentials together given what might be decided under various conditions.
So now from the perspective that consciousness is free to do all sorts of feeling, thinking, and so on, though it’s the brain that sets up automatic muscle function that will from time to time be chosen by a conscious EM field decider, let’s consider these two ways of potentially testing McFadden’s theory.
If two EM field detectors have been hooked up to a computer that’s been trained to identify signs of 39 English phonemes, then it makes sense that it ought to be possible to identify signs that the subject is trying to cause his/her mouth to utter such phonemes if McFadden’s theory happens to be true. Mind you that the scientists in the presented case have probably never even heard of McFadden’s theory and so shouldn’t be attempting to test it. It would seem however that here they’ve provided evidence of its truth.
Then my own plan goes the opposite way. I predict that if scientists were to put transmitters (rather than detectors) in someone’s head to transmit EM energies that are appropriate to that part of the brain (like vision areas), then they ought to be able to find energy parameters which mess up that person’s vision should McFadden’s theory be true.
Mind you that neuroscientists in general consider these energies mainly extraneous to brain function. Beyond a bit of speculative talk about ephaptic coupling, I get the sense it’s thought that neurons sometimes fire in synchrony because that’s how the brain needs associated ions to flow for effective function, not because a resulting EM field might exist as consciousness itself. Aren’t they mainly just pleased they’re able to roughly monitor the firing of neurons somewhat by detecting resulting EM disturbances? EM field consciousness theories are not popular.
Regarding things like blindsight, my own explanation instead involves how much the non-conscious brain is involved with input data. Just because there are lesions which prevent the synchronous neuron firing that would cause a given image to exist, this shouldn’t mean that the non-conscious brain will be unable to get a sense of what would be seen given the input data itself. Thus sometimes a person might react to things that they can’t actually see given that the brain does sense them in the data anyway.
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Let me address the vortices first with a primary link but you can Google for others.
“The signals, which appeared as swirling spirals of brain waves across the outer layer of the brain, were discovered in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults, and appeared both when they were resting and working on tasks.
The exact purpose of these vortices is unknown, but their discoverers think the spiral signals might be used to link different parts of the brain and help process information faster. These vortices may even be impaired by brain diseases such as dementia”.
https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/mysterious-spiral-signals-in-the-human-brain-could-be-key-to-our-cognition
Original article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01626-5
Below link is fascinating video. The right side most clearly shows the vortices. The colors reflect whether they are clockwise or counter-clockwise.
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41562-023-01626-5/MediaObjects/41562_2023_1626_MOESM3_ESM.avi
I’ve speculated that the vortices are concentrations of the EM field since they have neurons firing in a circular pattern as if focusing on a target(s) possibly the neuron generating the conscious part of the firings.
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” I presume that the vast majority of what we do occurs non-consciously. Here we should merely take credit for things that are done automatically”.
My FCT envisions a large unconscious component that does most of the information integration as opposed to McFadden’s theory.
” I predict that if scientists were to put transmitters (rather than detectors) in someone’s head to transmit EM energies that are appropriate to that part of the brain (like vision areas), then they ought to be able to find energy parameters which mess up that person’s vision should McFadden’s theory be true”.
I would start with simply being able to generate an EM field map of the brain in action. I don’t know if that can be done with magnetoencephalography, but if it could be done it possibly could be correlated with fMRIs of brain activity and various types of conscious experience.
But I’m also thinking that consciousness may be heterogeneous than we think. Strong firings may be tied to more cognitive activities, e.g spotting the snake in weeds. Weaker firings are tied to background consciousness and more generalized feelings like body aches, fear, feelings of well-being. At lowest level, there might even be a chemical component that sets up predispositions for neurons in mass.
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Different ways of measuring things should only help. So yes if fMRI seems to show pictures of swirling spirals of neuron firing, then that’s something else to factor in given this sort of tool. (That video doesn’t seem to come up for me though.) Conversely EEG simply gives squiggly lines across a screen for a given detector.
On consciousness being heterogeneous, that certainly seems to be the case regarding the speed with which brain waves spike. There are Delta waves that go from .5 to 4 hertz and are mainly associated with deep sleep. Then theta waves that go from 4 to 8 hertz which are prominent in less deep sleep and are also associated with memory. Then Alpha waves go from 8 to 12 hertz and are associated with being awake though not thinking about much. Then Beta waves go from 12 to 38 hertz and tend to occur when one is awake, alert, and thinking about things. Then above 38 hertz would be Gamma waves which tend to occur when intensely focused or engaged.
I guess for most people these are just extraneous patterns that give us clues about various stages of brain function, though the EM energies behind them have little to no brain function significance in themselves. Conversely I suspect that these sorts of EM fields are the physics by which consciousness either will or will not exist. Furthermore it seems to me that there should be plenty of ways to establish the truth or falsity of this.
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Different functional units can have their own unique waves. I may have mentioned in comments about the theta waves in the hippocampus that may be the key to much of what experience as consciousness. Zeki and Buzsaki think it may be a key integration point that ties memory to spatial and temporal location.
This article (haven’t found full text yet) says the vortices may be key to persisting brain patterns (conscious experience?) over time and keep them from degrading. They may be key to binding together asynchronous activity.
“The phase cone manifests a vortex, which is initiated by the null spike, and which is inferred to help stabilize and prolong its accompanying AM pattern that might otherwise be rapidly degraded by the turbulent neural noise from which it emerges”.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19625165/
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Well if you figure anything out then hopefully you can help me understand too. In that abstract I can sort of grasp an idea here or there, but in the grand scheme of things must admit that I have no idea what’s Walter Freeman is talking about.
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Yeah, it is terminology dense reading for sure.
If we narrow it down to some pieces, it might be a little more understandable.
Brains interface with the world through perception. The process extracts information from microscopic sensory inputs and incorporates it into the mesoscopic memory store for retrieval in recognition. The process requires creation of spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity. The construction is done through phase transitions in cortical populations that condense the background activity through spontaneous symmetry breaking. Large-scale interactions create fields of synaptically driven activity that is observed by measuring brain waves (electrocorticogram, ECoG)
My translation: Perception triggers patterns of brain activity we can measure and that creates a memory store..
the resurgent order parameter imposes mesoscopic order seen in spatial patterns of ECoG amplitude modulation (AM) that actualize and update the memory of a stimulus. Read-out is through a divergent/convergent projection that performs on cortical output an irreversible spatiotemporal integral transformation. The ECoG reveals a conic phase gradient that accompanies an AM pattern. The phase cone manifests a vortex, which is initiated by the null spike, and which is inferred to help stabilize and prolong its accompanying AM pattern that might otherwise be rapidly degraded by the turbulent neural noise from which it emerges.
My Translation: Spatial patterns of amplitude modulation (changes in EM field, maybe?) prolongs the patterns and memory and keeps it from degrading.
If the brain is asynchronous to any degree (for which we have ample evidence), then to bind perceptions we need to be able to persist them over various time periods so they are available for binding with other perceptions available in a time frame. This could be happening at various time frames from a few milliseconds to several seconds with a lot of immediate experience happening in a 100-200 millisecond range. Consciousness itself and the need for persistence might need to be tied together.
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Thanks for that assessment James. It could be that some soft scientists and philosophers write in extremely esoteric ways honestly rather than mainly to protect their work from the scrutiny that they’d naturally get if people in general were able to understand what they were saying. It seems to me that modern soft science is structurally flawed in a way that encourages obfuscation to preserve the jobs of insiders by deflecting outsiders criticism. And maybe that would be fine, except that even insiders probably have to guess what their colleagues might be saying often enough given their choice of words. Regardless let’s go with your interpretation.
My interpretation of your assessment begins with — regardless of how consciousness works, we know that brain based perceptions need to somehow become memory. So EM field amplitude modulation might help facilitate this. And I suppose you’re interpreting more as well.
In any case my own thoughts on memory essentially runs like this. There is neural activity associated with input perceptions, as well as thinking, as well as doing. Here synaptic patterns thus become strengthened such that basic elements of former neuron firing can be set off more readily. So an image will disappear when you close your eyes, though there will still be some sense of what’s around you and generally where you are given the propensity for the right past basic neural firing to occur when called upon by means of what your thought invokes. Thus I have memory in the form of synapse based connections that thought based synchronous neuron firing tends to provoke.
This should only make sense to someone who understands that I’m referencing McFadden’s cemi here. I don’t know how someone could say anything intelligent about the neural nature of memory without some such framework based foundation to build upon.
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Not sure how McFadden’s theory explains synapse strengthening unless it is extended.
There are multiple forms of memory – the synapse level which you spoke about but also episodic which probably involves synapses but also is complicated than that.
There’s a fantastic paper I founding regarding this:
“We argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general”.
https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/fulltext/2022/12000/consciousness_as_a_memory_system.5.aspx
The paper is long but very readable. It is not jargon filled. It also covers a gamut of problems (the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness,) a complete theory needs to address. It’s filled with a lot of facts and basic information even if you don’t agree with the premise.
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