Potential/actual roles EM fields play in consciousness or brain processes

[IgnorantGod]

Good day everyone! A disclaimer beforehand, this is a long post (well, from my standards I guess?), now that is said, off I go!

I was yet again roaming on the internet (instead of doing something meaningful, obviously, or else I wouldn't be 'true' to my meme avatar anymore) looking for interesting info about EM fields, neurology's Default Mode Network (DMN) and arousal, when I came across an intriguing article on consciousness.

But first, I'll add a bit of context in order to somewhat link the searches I made that brought up the reasons I'm writing this thread, in the here and now now in the past. It all started when our fellow DI member sahgwa brought the murder of a plasma physicist named Nuno F. Loureiro. It prompted me to actually go back to an ATS thread, Electromagnetism, UFOs, and the Weaponization of Alien Technology, written by ATS member The Gut.

While, at first, I was looking for info on EM fields that could potentially link the above physicist researches to any kind of weaponized EM effects, my interest shifted to those EM effects on the brain. More specifically, its influence on the neural network, and its arousal systems, which is when I came across the two links above. From the first, one can infer that I was also looking at other substances that affect the neural network, namely, psychedelics. Intriguing enough, this abstract was putting "deep meditation" and "the use of psychedelic" in the same bag, implying that the 'effects' of said substances could be 'manually induced' without those.

Anyway, it is at that point that my attention shifted (again) on the word 'arousal', which refers to the "...autochthonous neural systems that evoke waking from sleep in response to sensory stimuli, prolong or enhance arousal in response to special stimuli, and also generate and maintain wakefulness regardless of sensory stimuli during the active part of the day", taken from the abstract of the second link above. I got interested in 'awakeness' and 'awareness' in regards to those sensory stimuli and started wondering, if one could think/analyse while experiencing such stimuli? Basically, can one 'think' and 'react' simultaneously?

I'm finally getting to the actual 'core' of the thread, when I started looking with the search engine using the word simultaneously, I got this fascinating article among the results : Simultaneity of consciousness with physical reality: the key that unlocks mind-matter problem.

It is written by an obscur figure named John Sanfey. I couldn't find much on him, and his ]list of publications seems somewhat short. In any case, I think the article he wrote (assuming it is bel et bien him) was well explained, and gave interesting 'predictions' in EM and biology if his theory is 'true'.

Here's the one that caught my attention (note that he refers as "AR" his own use of the term Abstract Realism, which is not to confound with its meaning in Arts or philosophy) : 

AR’s biological postulate is that consciousness is instantiated in the bi-directional interaction between synchronised neural firing and system memory reported by microtubules (MTs). The observing frame of reference may be reversible between the two EM fields, but normally would be from system memory, where previous firing patterns are accessed and re-transmitted quantum mechanically by MTs.[sup]7[/sup] The EM field caused by synchronous neural firing seeks resonant patterns with system memory as it produces the MTs’ EM fields. The speciousness of the conscious now is explained by the fact that the two mirrored information systems exist in different media, at vastly different scales, at different phases in time with different durations of existence but communicate with each other’s substrate using similar EM fields. All these factors contribute to the thickening of time we experience as the conscious now, in a similar manner to Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS), whereby synchronously and recursively firing neuronal groups across widely distributed brain areas are selectively favoured (Edelman, 2003), although Edelman’s TNGS does not have an EM component.

*Italics mine.

I had this thought recently, wondering if consciousness wouldn't be arising from interactions between subjects rather than being a subject itself. Where our John place consciousness, it seems like a decent place for a control check-up in a feedback loop system. Maybe the kind of 'control system' that Jacques Vallee's was referring to in relation to the 'high-strangeness'/UFO phenomena?

Alright, at this point, I can already 'hear' some of you readers : "Well IgnorantGod, I've read the story of your life so far, and I'm yet still wondering, what the hell is this all about anyway!?"

Well my fellow members, I reply, as DI is a discussion board, it goes without saying that this thread here is about discussing. Any of the topics mentioned are, in my mind, worthy of such. It is also a place, I hope, for other members to share links and/or thoughts that could add further info on consciousness, EM fields, their weaponization, UFOs/'high strangeness', brain functions and/or any relations between them.

And finally, it is also to 'save' those links I found, since I haven't done looking/reading. For example, I still have an open tab about the effects of infrasound in the brain that I haven't read yet, that may contain info to share and expand here (wait, did I just..., nevermind). I also intend to read The Gut's whole thread, as it was written in 2013, there may be some interesting links from researches/weaponization of that time which may tie in with more recent researches.

As always, thank you for reading bearing with the long read, and Cheers! 

[Sirius]

reversing EM fields
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh9aZ2uemk0&t=675s

some forms or all of stimulation will also create an opposite reaction

cool propagation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MQbbZUfcE

Look into EM effects and neurotransmitters

"Common neurotransmitters include glutamate, GABA, acetylcholine, glycine, dopamine and norepinephrine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter

"In a neuron, synaptic vesicles (or neurotransmitter vesicles) store various neurotransmitters that are released at the synapse. The release is regulated by a voltage-dependent calcium channel"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_vesicle

In the ESP experiments, information was still transmitted/received in shield environments. EM apparently has nothing to do with consciousness or rather it's just internal mechanics. Maybe nothing is transmitted and received and there is just an forever field.

[IgnorantGod]

[...]

Look into EM effects and neurotransmitters

"Common neurotransmitters include glutamate, GABA, acetylcholine, glycine, dopamine and norepinephrine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter

"In a neuron, synaptic vesicles (or neurotransmitter vesicles) store various neurotransmitters that are released at the synapse. The release is regulated by a voltage-dependent calcium channel"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_vesicle

In the ESP experiments, information was still transmitted/received in shield environments. EM apparently has nothing to do with consciousness or rather it's just internal mechanics. Maybe nothing is transmitted and received and there is just an forever field.

Hi Sirius, been a while we haven't discussed. Glad to see you around!

Yes, I've come across some papers mentioning those neurotransmitters, had too many tabs opened, so I've closed some. I'll post the link if I come across it again.

The ESP side is always fascinating, and equally fascinating, the fascination exhibited by some members of the intelligence community.

[Sirius]

Hi Sirius, been a while we haven't discussed. Glad to see you around!

Yes, I've come across some papers mentioning those neurotransmitters, had too many tabs opened, so I've closed some. I'll post the link if I come across it again.

The ESP side is always fascinating, and equally fascinating, the fascination exhibited by some members of the intelligence community.

 fascination == funded programs for decades

uhmmm yeah so stimulating the release of chemicals and those things have different lifetimes and then you got propagating and reversing fields, this is all distraction maybe unless there is an applicable technology to be derived. Curiosity alone gets you nowhere or something like that 

" if one could think/analyse while experiencing such stimuli? Basically, can one 'think' and 'react' simultaneously?"

not really sure what you mean here. you do have subconscious processing and it can be observed and interacted with using drugs or meditation

there slow-motion from car accidents and gun fights and things. our uhmm, resting frame does not perceive time correctly, like relative stuff

a friend once told me they sometimes get OBE's while semi-automatic stuff like driving, getting that third person perspective floating above the car. he describe it as surreal but still fully able to drive

[rickymouse]

reversing EM fields
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh9aZ2uemk0&t=675s

some forms or all of stimulation will also create an opposite reaction

cool propagation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MQbbZUfcE

Look into EM effects and neurotransmitters

"Common neurotransmitters include glutamate, GABA, acetylcholine, glycine, dopamine and norepinephrine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter

"In a neuron, synaptic vesicles (or neurotransmitter vesicles) store various neurotransmitters that are released at the synapse. The release is regulated by a voltage-dependent calcium channel"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_vesicle

In the ESP experiments, information was still transmitted/received in shield environments. EM apparently has nothing to do with consciousness or rather it's just internal mechanics. Maybe nothing is transmitted and received and there is just an forever field.

I spent a lot of time investigating neurotransmitters because I have temporal lobe epilepsy.  The link you posted about the glutamates and other chemistries, sadly I knew about the vast majority of them because they directly interact with my epilepsy, and I researched most of those in depth over the years.  Since I am intolerant to all the classes of the anti-epileptic meds, I had to research this stuff and find natural sources to control my seizures.

With experimenting on my self and observations, I am one hundred percent positive that electromagnetic fields effect my brain...triggering seizure activity.  I know enough to avoid these.  A little exposure does not super excite my brain, but I have to watch the frequencies and EM waves pretty much. 

So, I have found that neuroexcitability can come from multiple sources.  We do not have a microwave in the house anymore, and around saws and tools that create electromagnetic fields, I found I can only do limited amounts of work with them...same with certain electric welders.  Sadly, much of my favorite things to do is work with wood and tools and I love welding and cutting with a plasma cutter.  It is not just the sound that effects my brain, electromagnetic fields also interact with it.

Before my temporal lobe epilepsy I had no problem, but I did notice that my thinking was distorted and energy level was effected by some tools I used, having to take a break to chill out if doing cutting or other things that generate fields....even being close to a power panel interacts with my body if a lot of power is flowing through it.....I knew that before I even had the epilepsy.  Working around high energy sources quite often you learn how they effect you.  I even had to move my router away from  me from under the desk, it was giving me sore muscles and tendons in my right leg.

So, both of you are pretty right to some extent.  I cannot have high glutamate foods, always had a problem with them, but lately some foods I chose to control my epilepsy unbalance the glutamine to glutamate balance for the synapsis....good for the epilepsy, but bad for my body.  So now I take a small L-glutamine tablet and the muscles and joints are mostly pain free, and that is directly related to the food and supplement chemistry I have to take to control my epilepsy.  Sinigen in boiled cabbage is the main culprit, but maybe taurine and NAC could also be related to that...I take a small dose of that supplement every day so I do not have to eat so much soups.

EM fields directly effect my brain and although now I am more sensitive to them, with observation and evaluation I am sure they always have....same with frequencies, base sounds below my hearing threshold give me headaches if I am around them....before thunder storms I often get headaches....all the way back to when I was a kid.  Now I have made some changes in diet and environment and now I do not get the headaches that often anymore...but can still feel some sort of feeling before the thunderstorm.  But sometimes the field it gives off causes a storm and sometimes it goes off to the side, so it is not great for predicting if a thunderstorm is coming.  I used to work outside a lot, and I was pretty good at knowing if we were going to get rained on, guys working for me learned to trust my instincts about getting things put away before a storm hit....I at that time did not know much about those frequencies that you cannot hear from storms far away....but I could predict something was coming pretty well most days.  I am a builder, I did a lot of work on homes and building homes....that ability was a positive ability for me in my profession

Relevancy is what is important.  The skull can somewhat protect us from EMF fields, but the signal can backfeed through nerves running through our body.

I am not sure what you were getting at in your post but it has now been pretty well been proven that certain fields and frequencies interact with the mind.  Now, since our whole society is in an EM or unnatural energy bubble, our government is not going to admit these fields are going to interact with our central nervous system.....we need to be around these fields...even the energy coming from computer monitors is bad for us.  But these government agencies are not going to say anything that has the ability to destroy the majority of jobs in this country...we pay taxes on earnings, they want that tax money from us working.

I am not afraid of these fields, but am cautious about how they effect my epilepsy after discovering how much they influence my ability to think properly.  My mind is so peaceful out in the woods away from all of this electrical crap but I cannot live out in the woods with no technology or electricity.

I have known how these fields effect me for many decades, especially when I worked at Kohler making sinks and engine blocks.  Those fields tired me out way more than the actual physical work did.  There were big motors spinning all over the place and high draw of electricity flowing through power lines all over the basement where I worked  on the shakeout in the foundry.  You get used to it but it does mess with your thinking somewhat.

[IgnorantGod]

[...]

EM fields directly effect my brain and although now I am more sensitive to them, with observation and evaluation I am sure they always have....same with frequencies, base sounds below my hearing threshold give me headaches if I am around them....before thunder storms I often get headaches....all the way back to when I was a kid.  Now I have made some changes in diet and environment and now I do not get the headaches that often anymore...but can still feel some sort of feeling before the thunderstorm.  But sometimes the field it gives off causes a storm and sometimes it goes off to the side, so it is not great for predicting if a thunderstorm is coming.  I used to work outside a lot, and I was pretty good at knowing if we were going to get rained on, guys working for me learned to trust my instincts about getting things put away before a storm hit....I at that time did not know much about those frequencies that you cannot hear from storms far away....but I could predict something was coming pretty well most days.  I am a builder, I did a lot of work on homes and building homes....that ability was a positive ability for me in my profession

[...]

Thanks for chiming in! Always great to read your posts.

Interesting that you bring up thunderstorms. I don't have a link at hand for the moment, but I'm fairly confident some pattern in EM changes during thunderstorms were suspected to increase the likelyhood of a UFO/'high strangeness' phenomena.

I agree that researches tend to show several parts of the EM spectrum can affect the body/brain. Maybe a session of Persinger's God helmet? 

[IgnorantGod]

[...]

" if one could think/analyse while experiencing such stimuli? Basically, can one 'think' and 'react' simultaneously?"

not really sure what you mean here. you do have subconscious processing and it can be observed and interacted with using drugs or meditation

[...]

If I try to elaborate, I was mostly thinking about the 'first reaction' to a stimuli, that seems to trigger before consciousness is 'aware' of the event of which the stimuli originate. Can one 'think' during the time lapse of such 'first reaction', although I didn't went that far with the search engine, provided I found the link I posted as the 'core' of the OP of which picked my interest.

I mean, it is hard to 'analyze' oneself reaction to an event all the while 'reacting' to it.

[Sirius]

If I try to elaborate, I was mostly thinking about the 'first reaction' to a stimuli, that seems to trigger before consciousness is 'aware' of the event of which the stimuli originate. Can one 'think' during the time lapse of such 'first reaction', although I didn't went that far with the search engine, provided I found the link I posted as the 'core' of the OP of which picked my interest.

I mean, it is hard to 'analyze' oneself reaction to an event all the while 'reacting' to it.

that's generally why people train. some say that is one of the purposes of dreams, it gives you a chance to moderate your actions.

it's possible to modulate the perception of time during meditation and i have head it's linked to breathing rhythms, particularly in the moments between breathing out or in. i suspect you may also not be breathing during high stress events such car accidents etc.

perhaps adopting certain breathing patterns as habit's can give you an extra milliseconds of time, i have definitely been out of synch, it's not pleasant, so i don't know how practical, maybe you get used to it

[IgnorantGod]

I've been pondering about self-reflection for a while now, mostly about how I can only analyze past reactions. It is what mostly prompted me to look for papers about "simultaneous thinking and reacting" on the web. This thought kept coming back ; "I can only know how I react after the fact, and moreover, deriving a conclusion from such analysis doesn't garantee that I'll react the same way provided there's a 'next time'. Therefore, I can't know with any certitude whatsoever about who I am in the 'now', until 'now' happens."

Then, this 'click' just 'popped' ; "Isn't it similar to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics?"

From the link :

The wave function in quantum mechanics evolves deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation as a linear superposition of different states. However, actual measurements always find the physical system in a definite state. Any future evolution of the wave function is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the system that is not obviously a consequence of Schrödinger evolution. The measurement problem concerns what that "something" is, how a superposition of many possible values becomes a single measured value.

*Italics mine

I'm not well verse on quantum mechanics, hence I can't determine the 'validity' of that potential similarity. However, there's this bit in the article written by John Sanfey :

AR and the brainThere is good evidence that connectivity between feedforward and feedback modifier signals is necessary for consciousness and that feedforward signals from sensory and cognitive stimuli, propagate through various content relevant areas of the brain during consciousness (Koch et al., 2016). In both IIT and GW theories the degree to which a system is conscious is the extent to which any point at the interface of interacting systems can create rapid and wide access to distributed system memory, or cause action by the whole system. These ideas are all compatible with AR, but they fall short for explaining the phenomenal simultaneity between observer and observed required by AR’s bridging principle.
 The problem of simultaneity is closely related to the long-standing combination problem of consciousness often attributed to James (1890). This is the problem of explaining how the brain combines a rich tapestry of multimodal perceptions and thoughts into a unified phenomenal field. The bridging principle of AR provides the basis of a solution. AR predicts that consciousness is phenomenally instantiated when two EM fields interact causally with the substrate generating the other. The postulate is that information in the EM fields created by synchronised neuronal firing tries to mirror itself in system memory and that this is achieved when its EM field resonates with similar EM fields multiply created in the microtubules (MTs) within the firing neurons. This hypothesis may seem far-fetched, but there is increasing evidence to suggest it is feasible.
 Microtubules (MTs) are tubular structures that exist in all eukaryotic cells, namely those cells that contain internal, membrane-bound organelles. MTs are important for transport, cell division and construction, but also for memory in the plasticity of dendritic connections (Dent, 2017). It has been suggested that the symmetrical arrangement of the tubulin building blocks of MTs may also be important (Sahu et al., 2013b; Janke, 2014; Janke and Magiera, 2020; Hameroff, 2022). MTs are likely to play some essential role in consciousness because they are highly sensitive to general anaesthetics that switch consciousness off during surgical procedures (Craddock et al., 2015). AR’s postulate predicts that their electromagnetic (EM) properties are the critical component for consciousness.

*Bolds mine

A resonance of two EM fields between "synchronised neuronal firing", as in, reacting to an event, and microtubules within those neurones. It doen't seem so far-fetched from my layman perspectives.

[IgnorantGod]

Here's another interesting link (I'm currently halfway through it) : A biosemiotic modeling...
 

In applying semiotic analysis to biology, we are not only interested in iconic signs which allow us to distinguish life from non-life forms. We also seek to identify indexical signs that would be indicative of the state of life living beings possess. We look for the presence of concrete Interpretants or habits in living systems that will in turn serve as objective indicators for homeostasis or well-being within individual organisms and balance within entire ecosystems. The “ideal state” of a living organism serves as the general Icon of the Object or the universal idea of that particular organism. For instance, the mention of the words “human being,” evokes the Icon of one who is “normal and healthy.” This image emerges in the mind in an instantaneous manner. This phenomenon is characteristic of the Peircian Category of Firstness which will be explained in detail in a later section. Each individual strives in its own way to approach or attain this ideal state which serves as the purpose or the telos of their “living.” To what extent they approximate this ideal state becomes the Index, the “reference to a standard,” that indicates how “normal” their actual state is.

The above paragraph comes from the second part in the link, and basically tells that biosemiotic is interested in finding a 'Perfect Form' (so to speak) of a "well-being" state to which an individual's 'self' can 'compare' its current state with.

It occured to me, the experience of 'higher self' could actually be, not a 'personal self' to the experiencer, but rather the species 'self', that is, an 'higher layer' one. Provided that one's thoughts can affect the body, and vice-versa, could a 'species level' consciousness/self's thoughts affects the 'components' of it, that is, an individual human and its 'self'?

While the experience is 'personal' to the experiencer, the effect of such experience spread outside the individual ('measured' by a change in actions/choices/behaviors). The communication, and the spread of the idea itself (the meme) can have an effect on the people involved in it, even if they themselves haven't experienced it directly.

It could be interesting to look for a pattern in the 'choice' of individuals that experienced such, and the changes that occured not only in the individual, but the community, a population or even species wide 'interpretations' (scientific knowledge, paradigm shifts, etc.). There may also be a proportional relation between the 'intensity' of an individual experience, and the 'intensity' of its effects.

Here's a quote from The Gut's OP :

We might also keep in mind the theory that many of our greatest scientific advancements are the result of the visionary thinkers of Science Fiction and the discoveries of Science feeding off of each other in a synergistic cycle of creativity.

Jules Verne writes From the Earth to the Moon and the next thing you know we've built rockets that took us there. Capt. Kirk flips the top on a communicator and a couple of decades later we're on our cell phones facetiming or Skyping with a friend or business contact on the other side of the globe. Our "Alien" brothers and sisters and their wondrous gadgetry have, it seems, made an impact, too.

It seems to me that 'ideas', or 'interpretations', follow 'organic' changes throughout a population/species.