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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