Rouileau writes: When I joined Dr. Michael A. Persinger’s laboratory in 2012, I spent a few years developing several ideas and techniques, including EEG, before coming upon William James’ hypothesis of transmissive brain function. Dr. Persinger was a clinical neuropsychologist, scientist, and the head of an interdisciplinary neuroscience laboratory – the Neuroscience Research Group (NRG) – where creativity and the desire to challenge assumptions were the price of admission. Beyond the “God Helmet”, Persinger and his rotating team of NRG members were responsible for some extraordinary discoveries in both mainstream and marginalized scientific circles over the last 40 years. Indeed, his work on the biological effects of low-intensity EMF exposures, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, and consciousness are well-noted.
However, Persinger also explored the empirical bases of psi phenomena including remote viewing, poltergeist and haunt events, alien abduction and mystical experiences, as well as mind-matter interactions. As I was involved in the NRG’s previous investigations concerning the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field on cognition and behaviour, I was inspired to ask the question of whether electromagnetic forces and their interactions with the brain could satisfy the conditions of James’ hypothesis of transmission. Upon further examination of the problem, it became clear that testing the hypothesis would require a complete re-framing of our traditional approach to neuroscience research.
To make any progress at all, we needed to conceptualize consciousness as a physical entity located at least partially outside of the brain. Only then did it become reasonable to consider the possibility of measuring correlates of consciousness as a function of EMF-brain interactions. Just as dissecting radios in search of music would fail to grapple with the underlying mechanism, so too would a study of transmissive consciousness that treated the brain as its generator.
Over the next 3 years, Persinger and I designed and executed dozens of experiments with chemically fixed, post-mortem human brains, searching for extracerebral signs of consciousness. We hypothesized that brains could passively receive and process electromagnetic information. Because reception would be dependent upon the antenna-like, material structures of the brains rather than their active neurophysiology, life would not be a requisite condition for transmissive function.
We predicted that by measuring human brains that were chemically fixed shortly after clinical death, it would be possible to detect signals that could be filtered by the brain to express consciousness. Because any brain activity associated with action potentials would be eliminated by fixation, we hypothesized that what dynamics remained would constitute evidence for transmission, and therefore, the survival of at least one type of brain function following death. Our model of brain function would accommodate both active (productive) and passive (transmissive) functional dependencies.
The following are some of the types of questions we asked when designing our experiments in search of EMF-brain transmissions: How do the properties of applied electromagnetic fields change when they interact with post-mortem human brain tissues? Can putative transmissive functions be shielded by EMF-blocking materials? Do the frequencies of EMFs shift upon interacting with brain tissues to align with known neural correlates of consciousness? Are EMF-brain interactions similar in living and post-mortem brains? Do brain regions “filter” electromagnetic radiation differently? As far as we were aware, these questions had never been asked before and the potential rewards were worth the time and effort.
In 2017, I published my doctoral dissertation entitled “Structures and Functions of the Post-Mortem Brain: An Experimental Evaluation of the Residual Properties of Fixed Neural Tissues”, which is a collection of 7 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that constitute the first empirical assessments of William James’ transmissive hypothesis. In this section, I will describe some of our main results and their implications relative to the survival of human consciousness following bodily death. In each of the studies, we used post-mortem human brain tissues (originally donated for research and teaching purposes) and a common measurement technique based upon EEG. Needle electrodes were embedded into the cerebral cortices of fixed, post-mortem human brains to record low-amplitude microvolt fluctuations.
Whereas all conductive substrates, brain or not, can express electrical noise as slight voltage fluctuations, organized patterns among the noise reflective of living-like brain signatures would not emerge in all substrates. This would be analogous to detecting highly organized voices as whispers among a much louder cacophony of environmental sounds. We hypothesized that the preserved structure of the brain could operate like a biological antenna, receiving electromagnetic transmissions as subtle but detectable induced currents that would be uniquely filtered by the probed tissue region.
We found promising results. Despite significant levels of electrical noise associated with the measurement of voltage fluctuations within post-mortem tissues, reliable oscillatory patterns were apparent. That is, the electrical “fingerprint” of each cortical region was unique, not uniform. Gross electrical geometries could be discerned across the brain and certain regions amplified natural or artificially applied EMFs and direct current more than others. Therefore, whatever we were measuring was not random, and the material properties of the brain were modulating the electrical noise in ways that other materials would not.
Here, I will discuss the specifics of our major findings that demonstrate transmissive brain function, and therefore the survival of consciousness, is possible beyond a reasonable doubt.
Our initial discovery was derived from comparisons of living and post-mortem human brain measurements. First, we measured the brain activity of living human subjects using EEG while they wore EMF-shielding caps over their heads. We wanted to know if brain activity would change as a function of environmental EMFs – which are about 50 million times less intense than those associated with MRI scanners – and if we could inhibit the effects with shielding. The experiment had two measurement phases: 1) with the shield, and 2) without the shield. Therefore, each individual was subjected to EEG measurements with and without the EMF-shielding cap (i.e., within-subject design); however, the order was counterbalanced such that some participants wore it during the first phase and others wore it during the second phase.
Specifically, low frequency (theta, 4–7 Hz) brain activity became less synchronous over the right temporal lobes of participants when they wore the EMF-shielding cap relative to when they did not. We source-localized the EEG signals, which were originally obtained over the surface of the scalp, to the parahippocampal region using a technique called standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA). That is, the actual source of the EEG differences at the surface were due to changes in the deeper parahippocampal region near the base of the inner surface of the skull.
It should be noted that the material structure of the parahippocampal region is unique because it is the architectural transition point between the 6-layered “neocortex” and the 3-layered “archicortex”. It is also the place in the brain where experience and memory functionally converge as the structure of the neocortex shape-shifts into the hippocampus. Our results demonstrated that shielding the brain from environmental EMFs affected the temporal lobes asymmetrically, which suggested that the brain may be non-uniformly susceptible to EMF-based transmission. If similar asymmetries could be found in post-mortem tissues, then we could confirm a passive EMF-brain interaction that is expressed in both living and post-mortem brains.
To that end, we measured the electrical noise within left and right parahippocampal regions of 3 separate post-mortem human brain specimens. Notably, we observed more theta-band oscillations in the right parahippocampal regions relative to the left. The effect was also specific to the “grey matter” or cell-containing regions and not the adjacent “white matter” or fiber-containing regions, which indicated the complex microstructure of the tissue was a relevant receptive factor.
In summary, we found that EMF-brain interactions are detectable in living and post-mortem brains, can be attenuated by EMF-shielding, affect brain regions asymmetrically with a deep temporal lobe focus, and affect some brain oscillation frequencies (i.e., theta) but not others.
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/.
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