Transmissive consciousness: Rouleau excerpt #10

This is Nicolas Rouleau’s electromagnetic, transmissive model of consciousness that survives brain death. He explains: Infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV), and visual light (VL), as well as electromagnetic fields (EMF) interact with brains to transmit consciousness that can be inferred by measuring the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). The electromagnetic energies that transmit consciousness are physically independent of the brain and EM-based signals are readily emitted by the brain. Because EM-based inputs and outputs are independent extensions of brain information, consciousness likely survives brain death.

Having described the mechanisms underlying the electromagnetic transmission of information within the living brain, the following question becomes relevant: How does death impact the brain’s ability to interact with electromagnetic energy? As previously discussed, when the brain dies and decays, the cellular membranes that sustained its electromagnetic functions lose their structural integrity and their ability to generate action potentials. Without these features, it is generally assumed that the productive functional dependence of the brain is no longer possible. Given enough time, a decaying brain will decompose and then disintegrate entirely – leaving no trace of function, including consciousness, behind. To prevent decay and decomposition, brains can be placed in preservatives like formaldehyde that maintain both their gross and fine structures – a process called chemical fixation. While there are many ways to “fix” brain tissues, the net result is the same: cells are forced into complete stasis.

That is, the positions of cells are held constant and all of their activities that are dependent upon the passage of time stand still. In effect, the brain becomes a three-dimensional “snapshot” of itself that is structurally stable but functionally inert. Or, rather, functionally inert from the perspective of productive functional dependence. Just as a tuning fork holds a definite shape that is receptive to transmissions of a specific frequency of vibrating air, perhaps the fixed structures of the brain are similarly receptive to transmissions of electromagnetic oscillations.

While the preservation of brains is by no means a recent development, the technique presents contemporary scientists with a unique opportunity to test the transmission theory of consciousness directly by experimentation. Analogous to the practical significance of genetic knockout models, the chemical fixation process eliminates the possibility of productive function. 

But what about transmissive function? If brains can, even in death, filter EMFs such that they become – as William James put it – “sifted and limited” to express electromagnetic signatures of consciousness, then survival can be empirically tested. I, therefore, designed several experiments to test the transmission hypothesis using post-mortem human brain tissues and the results compelled me to re-evaluate all of my assumptions about brain 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.