Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Physicists on a hunt for site of consciousness

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience:

Recently, Nir Lahav, a physicist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, went searching for this nucleus of conscious activity. He and his interdisciplinary team, which also included neuroscientists and mathematicians, used detailed scans of six brains to assemble an information map of the human cortex, the brain’s outer layer of neural tissue. With the map, they observed and recorded how certain parts of the cortex were connected to other parts. They charted regions of high connectivity and regions of low connectivity. The map approximated how information “flows” within the cortex, and showed where that flow is concentrated. The region with the highest traffic may very well be the seat of consciousness.More.

But what about those people most of whose brains are missing, who are conscious? Need consciousness have a site at all?

See also: Is most fMRI a false positive? Or the brain far more amazing?

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

and

Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments
At the 18:00 minute mark to about the 22:15 minute mark of the following video, an interesting experiment on the sleeping brain is highlighted in which it is demonstrated that there is a fairly profound difference in in the way the brain ‘shares information’ between different parts of the brain in its sleeping state compared to how the brain ‘shares information’ in its waking state. i.e. In the sleeping state, the brain shares much less information with different parts of the brain than the brain does during our waking state.
Through The Wormhole s02e01 Is There Life After Death – video (17:46 minute mark) https://youtu.be/vQW5eo_BME0?t=1069
Moreover, there is found to be 'zero-time lag' in the synchronization of widely separated parts of the waking brain
,,, zero time lag neuronal synchrony despite long conduction delays - 2008 Excerpt: Multielectrode recordings have revealed zero time lag synchronization among remote cerebral cortical areas. However, the axonal conduction delays among such distant regions can amount to several tens of milliseconds. It is still unclear which mechanism is giving rise to isochronous discharge of widely distributed neurons, despite such latencies,,, Remarkably, synchrony of neuronal activity is not limited to short-range interactions within a cortical patch. Interareal synchronization across cortical regions including interhemispheric areas has been observed in several tasks (7, 9, 11–14).,,, Beyond its functional relevance, the zero time lag synchrony among such distant neuronal ensembles must be established by mechanisms that are able to compensate for the delays involved in the neuronal communication. Latencies in conducting nerve impulses down axonal processes can amount to delays of several tens of milliseconds between the generation of a spike in a presynaptic cell and the elicitation of a postsynaptic potential (16). The question is how, despite such temporal delays, the reciprocal interactions between two brain regions can lead to the associated neural populations to fire in unison (i.e. zero time lag).,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2575223/ Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - Stuart Hameroff - video (1:55 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=118 The Puzzling Role Of Biophotons In The Brain - Dec. 17, 2010 Excerpt: It’s certainly true that electrical activity in the brain is synchronised over distances that cannot be easily explained. Electrical signals travel too slowly to do this job, so something else must be at work.,,, (So) It’s a big jump to assume that photons do this job. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/422069/the-puzzling-role-of-biophotons-in-the-brain/
There simply is no reductive materialistic explanation for atheistic materialists to appeal to in order to explain why the waking brain would be instantaneously synchronized. Whereas the Theist does have a 'beyond space and time', i.e. non-local, cause to appeal to in order to explain the instantaneous correlations of the waking brain:
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html
Verse and Music
Isaiah 50:4 The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of those who are instructed to know how to sustain the weary with a word. He awakens Me each morning; He awakens My ear to listen like those being instructed. Evanescence - Bring Me To Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YxaaGgTQYM Lyric Excerpt: Only you are the life among the dead All this time I can't believe I couldn't see Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems Got to open my eyes to everything Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul Don't let me die here There must be something more Bring me to life (Wake me up) Wake me up inside,,,
Supplemental note:
In order to even properly define reality in the first place, as WJM has made clear, mind must be primary.,,, There is even mathematical evidence that the Mind that is collapsing the wave function must be omniscient. That is to say, an ‘uncollapsed’ photon, in its quantum wave state, is mathematically defined as ‘infinite information’: (Sept. 2016) https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/new-scientist-asks-what-is-reality-made-of/#comment-616439
bornagain77
September 6, 2016
September
09
Sep
6
06
2016
03:54 AM
3
03
54
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply