Post by Tamrin on Apr 5, 2013 15:08:57 GMT 10
A fascinating paper (Systems Theory should be taught in high school basic science classes):
Indirect biological measures of consciousness from field studies of brains as dynamical systems
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Indirect biological measures of consciousness from field studies of brains as dynamical systems
While neurodynamics cannot explain consciousness, it does open novel perspectives for discussion, and it offers four predictions of neural correlates of consciousness that follow from a field theory and that cannot be explained by current network theories. To be a field in the sense intended, a cooperative domain must be an embedding continuum that provides energy at every point, as distinct from a network of synchronized nodes such as synapses and trigger zones at which energy is conceived as a point process. The embedding field is apparent in the background activity, which is highly structured by diffuse interactions. The carrier oscillations must have a spatial structure of analytic phase modulation indicating that cortex is a relativistic medium as distinct from ‘zero lag’ synchrony. And the neural correlate of a reported experience must be an AM pattern in which highs and lows have equal information, as distinct from a code in which the amount of information is related to the intensity of activity of each neuron in a focus: its frequency or timing of firing viewed a point process.
From these considerations I propose that consciousness can be defined as a field of force that is centered in a brain and that operates through the body simultaneously into all levels of the surround from subatomic to social. Awareness is perception of the forces of self and others as in peer pressures and familial forces. Unconsciousness comprises the immense reservoir that is provided by the nonlinear neurodynamics of the neural interactions, and that shapes the contents and structures of the field of force