Electromagnetic force: Rouleau excerpt #7

Rouleau writes: While William James’ transmission hypothesis is appealing as a solution to the problem of survival, he did not offer a potential mechanism. Without a physical mechanism by which transmission can occur, the hypothesis cannot survive scientific scrutiny. It seems to me that there are at least two possible mechanisms by which transmission could occur in principle. The first and less likely possibility is that there exists a consciousness-specific signal or particle that interacts with the brain, imbuing it with a capacity for experience and awareness.

The famous neurophysiologist John C. Eccles – who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Andrew Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin for their characterization of the neuronal action potential – proposed the existence of one such particle called the “psychon” that he claimed could solve the classic mind-brain problem. The idea involved a subatomic psychon interacting with a dendron, which is a receptive appendage of a neuron. Eccles posited that psychons would act on dendrons to imbue them with conscious experience and a reverse interaction would transfer perception and memory from the neuron to the particle. Psychons would also be able to interact with each other, creating a “psychon world” separate from the brain.

While his model is interesting, is consistent with William James’ transmission hypothesis, and is appealing as a solution to the survival problem, Eccles’ psychon has never been measured. The discovery of Eccles’ consciousness-specific particle would fundamentally disrupt our understanding of physics and elevate mental processes to the status of something like a fundamental force.

However, a more likely mechanism would involve a generic physical force that has already been identified and is well-known to interact with the brain. The candidate force should be pervasive over time and space with the capacity to transmit information over long distances. The electromagnetic force satisfies all of these criteria. Electromagnetic fields define the action potential, allow brain cells to communicate wirelessly, are used as biomarkers of brain disease, and even as clinically effective neuropsychiatric treatments when patterned appropriately. Experimental applications of electromagnetic fields to the brain can cause out-of-body experiences and the sensed presence including visitations and apparitions with reports of communion with a creator or God.

In the next section, I will discuss the most significant scientific evidence in support of the joint hypotheses that 1) the transmissive functional dependence of the brain is fundamentally electromagnetic and that 2) this satisfies the criteria for the survival of human consciousness following bodily death.

Nicolas Rouleau, PhD, a neuroscientist and bioengineer, is an assistant professor at Algoma University in Canada. He received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies "An Immortal Stream of Consciousness" in response to its search for "scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death." Footnotes and bibliography are omitted from these excerpts from his essay, but the full essay is available online at https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/contest-runners-up/.