Electromagnetic theory of consciousness

The electromagnetic theory of consciousness is the theory that the electromagnetic field produced by the brain is the actual medium of conscious experience.

It was originally proposed by Johnjo McFadden, Susan Pockett and E. Roy John. The starting point of the theory is the fact that whenever a neuron is excited to produce an action potential , it also produces a disturbance in the surrounding electromagnetic field (EMF).

Information encoded in the patterns of excited neurons is thus reflected in the EMF of the brain.

Placing consciousness in the brain’s EMF, rather than in neurons, has the advantage of clearly explaining how information located in millions of neurons scattered throughout the brain can be combined into a single conscious experience (sometimes called the pooling problem): information is combined into EMF.

Thus, the EMF of consciousness can be considered to be a “unifier of information”. This theory otherwise explains several puzzling facts, for example, as it turned out, attention and understanding tend to be correlated with the synchronous excitation of many neurons, and not with the excitation of individual neurons.

When neurons are excited together, their EMFs produce stronger disturbances in the general EM field of the brain; thus, synchronous neuronal excitation will tend to have a greater effect on the EMF of the brain (and thus on consciousness) than the excitation of individual neurons.

Various EMF theories diverge regarding the effect of the proposed EMF of consciousness on brain functions.

In the CEMI field theory of McFadden, the global brain EMF affects the movement of electric charges across neural membranes and thus affects the likelihood that individual neurons will be excited, providing a feedback loop that controls free will.

However, in the theories of Susan Pocket and E. Roy of John, there is no causal connection between the EMF of consciousness and our consciously desired actions.

If the theory is correct, then this is of paramount importance for efforts to translate consciousness into machines with artificial intelligence, since existing microprocessor technologies are designed to transmit information linearly through electrical channels, and more general electromagnetic effects are considered as interference and suppressed.

The first experiments on the physical embodiment of the electromagnetic theory of consciousness were conducted by a Russian research group. Researchers reported on the creation of the necessary computer hardware components to implement the "electromagnetic consciousness" based on CEMI theory by Johnjo MacFadden. In particular, the staff of the Department of Experimental Physics of the Ural State Technical University - UPI, K.N. Shevchenko, N.V. Shevchenko, B.V. Shulgin created a model of a neural network on neurons (EM neurons) with additional channels of information exchange through an electromagnetic field (EMF). The development is protected by patent ( Patent RU 2309457 C1, IPC G06N 3/06, G06G 7/60. Neural network model. Declared May 6, 2006; Published October 27, 2007; Bulletin No. 30).

Additional channels of interaction through EMF are technically implemented by a special axon design of an artificial neuron in the form of a chain of series-connected radio-pulse self-oscillators with self-extinguishing circuits and radio-pulse envelope allocation schemes. The ideology of the network of EM neurons largely coincides with the CEMI theory of Johnjo McFadden, the difference lies in the mechanism for the specific implementation of the process of exchanging information between neurons through EMF.

An EM neuron has a greater functional resemblance to a biological prototype compared to known models and performs the information processing functions inherent in a biological neuron. Except for the fact of emission and reception of electromagnetic waves (novelty of the invention), the operation of an EM neuron does not contradict the known models of biosimilar artificial neurons and corresponds to the observed processes in neurophysiology.

Studies of a small network of 3 EM neurons have shown that EM neurons are able to compete with each other for power sources. As a result of competition, self-organization of the neural network occurs - chaotic modes are replaced by synchronous ones, demonstrating patterns with complex time codes.

The question of spontaneous generation of consciousness in a network with such an architecture remains open as research continues.