The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (CEMI) Field Theory

Consider driving along a familiar road. You may be listening to the radio, thinking about some problem at work, but your brain is busy performing all the complex computations necessary to control your limb movements and maintain your car on the busy road, unconsciously. You spot a hazard sign 'Roadworks Major Congestion Ahead' and immediately your conscious mind takes control, to slow the car and perhaps try to find an alternative route home. What is it that is taking control in these situations?

What we need to look for is something that is a product of the brains activity, that integrates information but which also has the power to influence that activity. Surprisingly, we have known for years that such an entity exists within our brain. The neurons in our brain transmit electrical signals along and between nerve fibers. It is always assumed that the electrons and neurotransmitters moving down these nerves are the movers and shakers of neuronal computation.

However, all electrical circuits – and that’s basically all neurons – are generating an associated energy field, known as an electromagnetic field or EM field. This field contains precisely the same information as the circuitry that generated it. However, unlike neuronal information, which is localized in single or groups of neurons, the brain’s EM field will bind the neuronal information into a single integrated whole.

This Consciousness Electromagnetic Information (CEMI) Field Theory may sound far-fetched, but it rests on just three propositions. The first is that the brain generates its own EM field, a fact that is well known and utilized in brain scanning techniques such as EEG. The second is that the brain’s EM field is indeed the seat of consciousness. This is far harder to prove but there is plenty of evidence that is at least consistent with this hypothesis. EM fields are waves that tend to cancel out when the peaks and troughs from many unsynchronized waves combine. But if neurons fire together, then the peaks and troughs of their EM fields will reinforce each other to generate a large disturbance to the overall EM field.

In recent years neuroscientists in many laboratories across the world have become interested in the phenomenon of neuronal synchrony. Experiments from Paris’ Laboratoire de Neurosciences demonstrated synchronous firing in distinct regions of the brain when a subject’s attention is aroused by a pattern that resembled a face. When the subject saw only lines then his neurons fired randomly but when the subject realized he was looking at a face, his neurons snapped into step to fire synchronously. In this, and in many similar experiments, neurons firing alone does not correlate with awareness but the EM field disturbance generated by synchronous firing, does. The simplest explanation is that the brain’s EM field is conscious awareness – the CEMI field.

Johnjoe McFadden, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey in England, is one of a few scholars who enjoys a deep knowledge across many of these fields. His primary field has been systems-based approaches to infectious diseases, but he has written a number of papers and books that involve consciousness and his 'Conscious Electromagnetic Information' (CEMI) Field Theory of consciousness. Field theories of consciousness suggest that consciousness is a manifestation of an underlying field or fields, rather than being the result of computation or simply an inherent property of matter.

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