Our electromagnetic brains: Rouleau excerpt #9

Rouleau writes: Despite the darkened environment of the skull, the cerebral cortex, hypothalamus, and striatum express photoreceptors that are particularly sensitive to blue and ultraviolet light. The pineal organ, which is a well-known circadian regulator and René Descartes’ hypothesized seat of the soul, also contains photoreceptors.

Unlike the photoreceptors of our retinas, which allow us to detect photons with wavelengths corresponding to visible light, these deep-brain photoreceptors, which also detect visible light, are not linked to vision at all. Their widespread existence throughout the brain suggests these recondite photoreceptors are functionally relevant; however, investigations to address their roles are ongoing.

While light can penetrate the skull, it is unclear whether these deep-brain photoreceptors primarily detect light from within or outside the brain under normal circumstances. Together, these findings indicate that human brains are equipped with the capacity to emit and detect electromagnetic radiation in the form of visible or near-visible photons.

Though it should be clear by now that the brain emits and is receptive to electromagnetic radiation, the extent to which electromagnetic signaling is integral to brain activity has not yet been fully elucidated. As discussed in a previous section, synaptic transmission involves an electromagnetic discharge called the action potential that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. This is often referred to as electrochemical signaling, and therefore, is only partially electromagnetic.

However, there are at least two additional neuronal signaling modalities that are both purely electromagnetic. The first is electrotonic signaling, which involves direct connections between cells called gap junctions. With electronic signaling, the membranes of two or more cells form electrical bridges between their inner compartments and become functionally integrated. The third and most recently identified signaling modality is called “ephaptic coupling” and is the definitive neural signaling modality that demonstrates a direct brain dependence upon EMFs as a source of useful signaling information.

While synaptic transmission and electrotonic signaling involve interfaces that are directly connective or “wired”, ephaptic coupling is truly “wireless”; it occurs when cells detect and respond to electric fields emitted by adjacent cells. Because ephaptic coupling is non-directional, any neuron that fires an action potential can stimulate surrounding cells including itself by the reciprocal flow of electric field activations.

Therefore, ephaptic couplings supply the brain with many more wireless connections than wired connections, including looped circuits that are necessary for a process called reentry: a bidirectional exchange of information that may be a requirement for consciousness. As with other modalities, ephaptic coupling can be excitatory or inhibitory, with known functional roles within olfactory regions, the cerebellum, and the memory-encoding hippocampus, where slow and periodic activity self-propagates across the tissue like waves, constructively interfering with a veritable ocean of electric fields. Fundamentally, a neuron stimulated by its neighbor via ephaptic coupling cannot be said to have produced its own activity. Rather, all neurons are connected to each other by a Jamesian transmission of electromagnetic radiation.

The discovery of ephaptic coupling demonstrated that the microscopic environment of the brain is teeming with electromagnetic information, and in recent years researchers have turned to this exciting new modality as a means of furthering models of brain dynamics that are compatible with consciousness. Among them, Anastassiou and Koch presented a compelling review that endogenous electric fields at the cellular and network levels may provide vital feedback mechanisms facilitated by ephaptic couplings that are intrinsic to cognitive processes. Some scientists have suggested that ephaptic coupling may extend a capacity for consciousness to single cells as well as other animals and plants. Still others have implicated the often-neglected glial cells as contributors to ephaptic coupling by calcium-current-induced magnetic fields, which would indicate that nearly all brain cells contribute to the organ’s macro-scale EMF patterns.

This runs contrary to modern assumptions about how the brain works but opens up new and exciting possibilities, particularly for transmissive function. There is likely much to learn about ephaptic coupling but one thing is clear: it demonstrates that EMFs within the brain are not mere biproducts or meaningless noise – they contribute to signaling dynamics by transmission and, ultimately, form mental states. What if all the longstanding doctrines and dogmas that position neurotransmitters and other chemical intermediates as the chief determinants of brain functions such as consciousness are more epiphenomenal than causal? As we lift the veil that once obscured the brain’s transmissive functional dependence, its fundamental electromagnetic nature becomes clear.

While brain-based emissions of electromagnetic radiation are abundant, the functional relevance of EMF-brain interactions on consciousness can only be fully appreciated with an examination of the effects of experimentally applied and artificially generated EMFs on brain function. The most common experiences associated with applied EMF-brain exposures are the reports of “phosphenes” or perceived flashes of white light in the visual fields among patients subjected to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The magnets that generate the high-intensity, time-varying magnetic fields of the MRI activate nerve bundles within and along the visual pathway by Faraday’s law of induction, driving the flow of electric current and ultimately producing simple visual hallucinations.

Other established biological effects of MRI exposure are metallic taste, dizziness, nausea, and headaches, which suggest activations of the insular and temporal cortices. The same principles have been applied to engineer clinical devices and techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), to treat neurological disorders. TMS is a technique by which high-intensity EMFs are applied over the surface of the scalp, stimulating brain tissue in efforts to treat depression, anxiety, post- traumatic stress, as well as to facilitate recovery from traumatic brain injuries. TMS can also be used to reliably activate the primary motor cortex, which allows experimenters to control the movements of their subjects. In one notable experiment, scientists induced participants to move their left or right hands by secretly stimulating right or left motor areas respectively.

Remarkably, when participants – who were not aware if, when, or where they were stimulated – were asked to provide a rationale for why they moved their right or left hand they frequently reported that it was their choice – that they “wanted” and “intended” to move. Indeed, the experiment showed that applied EMFs associated with TMS can be used to control behavior and generate illusions of free will.

Whereas MRI scanners and TMS devices typically emit high-intensity EMFs (> 1 Tesla), decades of research have demonstrated that much weaker intensity fields can also affect conscious experience. As evidenced by my former mentor Dr. Michael Persinger’s pioneering work with complex, low-intensity (microTesla) EMFs, some of the most personally meaningful and life-changing human experiences can be reproduced in the laboratory by appropriate stimulations of the brain. With his co-inventor, Stanley Koren, Persinger created a helmet embedded with EMF-generating solenoids that could stimulate the temporal lobes of experimental subjects with field intensities within range of the brain’s own EMFs and environmental sources.

Instead of simple EMF patterns such as sine or square waves normally associated with TMS, Persinger converted EEG recordings from patients in meditative and trance-like states who reported “experiencing God” into complex, digitized patterns that could be applied through the helmet as EMFs. In other words, he isolated the electromagnetic brain patterns of some people in an altered state of consciousness, transformed them into signals, and applied them to separate brains as information-rich signals.

If, as Persinger hypothesized, EMF patterns carried information relevant to conscious experience, the applied patterns would be expected to produce genuine cognitive effects including transmitted subjective experiences. Indeed, hundreds of participants over several decades have reported out-of-body experiences and the feeling of a “sensed presence” when exposed to the helmet and some even claimed to have encountered a higher power or deity, inevitably inspiring the device’s more popular name: the “God Helmet”.

These studies, and those listed throughout this section, clearly demonstrate that the brain is an electromagnetic organ. But what about consciousness? That too, it would seem, is fundamentally electromagnetic as it can be extracted from one brain and re-applied to another as an information-rich EMF pattern with experience-inducing consequences.

 

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/.