Thoughts on the Structure of the Brain
By Christopher James Davia – 06/10/13
Within the context of the FCM the brain is treated as an excitable medium. Moreover, the brain is considered to be an excitable that can be structured in real time by the body and the senses. This structuring is effected by the most simple mapping of sense to neurons. Thus, for example, essential spatial relationships are preserved as a result of neural structuring of the visual cortex by the retina - it is a simple topological mapping. Consciousness correlates with the spatio/temporal evolution of a coherent soliton the structure of which is dependent upon the implicit structure of the medium. This coherent travelling wave is understood to in most respects similar to travelling waves that may be observed in a variety of excitable media, both biological and non-biological – with the exception that is solitonic and coherent.
Within the context of the model the significance of a neural event is that it takes place at a certain time and at a certain place with respect to other neural events taking place in space and time - simples. As a consequence of these insights it seemed less and less likely that the brain might be some sort of symbolic or virtual machine. The brain was processing 'in the plane of the problem' - or so I thought.
As a consequence of my experience with sensory substitution studies and my own work in analysis of neural re-mapping as a treatment for glaucoma, I am now certain that there are circumstances where the precise relationship of one neuron to another with respect to a 'real' space and time, is of secondary importance to what I would describe as its 'implicit' spatio/temporal position consequent upon the synthesis of many neural events over time. Could the brain be a ‘real’ AND a ‘virtual’ processing ‘engine’?
Going back to basics I began to consider again the principle structural differences between a simple excitable medium – a uniform plane, and the brain.
The most striking feature is its fractal structure. It behaves as an excitable medium at the macroscopic scale, but, this is also true at multiple levels of scale. In addressing the question as to why the excitable medium would be organized this way I concluded that it was, in all likelyhood, related to the possibility that the excitable medium could give rise to 'quantum coherent' travelling waves -This being based on nothing more than my own conviction that quantum coherence must be involved (a conviction rooted in previous work and reflection- especially on the question of 'time') and an 'intuition' as to the nature of quantum coherence based upon something that I once heard - somewhere, I can't remember where - that when BEC's collapse they do so fractally. I ran an imaginary film of a BEC collapsing backwards in my head and wondered if, in order to create a macroscopic BEC, you might need a fractal 'scaffold' to begin with? – like a brain!
OK, so far so good, but what about the macroscopic 3D structure of the brain? It always seemed likely, and it still does, that the macroscopic structure of the brain both eliminates its own implicit structure from influencing how travelling waves emerge and evolve, and also, to allow for the emergence of complex waves that may make explicit order/structure/invariance that doesn’t necessarily translate to proximate areas of the medium – as when we coordinate hearing and speech. But is this the whole or, indeed, the most important part of the story? – What is the principle utility to be gained from this structure?
My research has pointed strongly to something termed ‘fixed points’. These points are points of invariance around which change within the brain is mediated (or catalyzed). My thinking of ‘fixed points’ was always in the relatively simple spatio/temporal domain, but, I always knew that other types of ‘fixed points’ – for example – puns – verbal associations, would require some additional dimension of processing than I was, at that time, thinking about. What if the ‘fixed point’ solution to a particular cognitive problem lay outside of a ‘normal space’ – could the brain find it – how? And what about colours? How does a process that seems simply to be about events in space and time give rise to something like orange?
Could the macroscopic structure of the brain give me insight into how these problems might be solved?
The concept I want to communicate is a little difficult – so bear with me.
I once read a book called ‘Little Big’ - by John Crowley (I think). The book featured a mansion. It wasn’t a ‘real’ mansion, it was inside someone’s head! The mansion had been built over a lifetime – from childhood to old age. Each room within the house represented a particular time and the objects within the room were all redolent and significant of that particular moment in the life of the character in the novel. As the character grew older so the rooms that he invented became more complex, – and so too did the mansion. The creator of this strange house would invent, in his mind, doors and passageways that connected different parts of the house (and the characters memory) in ways that would be quite impossible in the ‘real’ world.
The large size of our brains is made possible due to the evolutionary enhancement of the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath allows for nerve impulses to travel faster and, or so it is thought, allows our brain to evolve to a greater size.
I believe that this is not quite the right answer. As you know, I think that consciousness correlates with a macroscopic soliton with a delta ‘t’ of about 16th of a second. I believe that the myelin sheath is actually maintaining a potential ‘uncertainty’ such that, within certain parameters, there is always an ambiguity as to whether neural event A precedes or follows neural event B. In short, I was beginning to wonder if the structure of the brain might be a little bit like the structure of the mansion in ‘Little Big’.
I was reminded of something that my friend once told me about the evolution of mathematical ‘roots’. He said that for a particular class of equation it could be shown quite clearly that there could be no possible ‘normal’ root. However, he said, if you force the issue mathematically, the mathematics will give you an answer – a complex number – a number that is outside of the normal number plane! He said that complex numbers were very useful and you could solve difficult problems with them. He said it was a little bit like jumping into hyperspace and getting the answer that it would have been impossible to get to in normal space and then popping back again!
So, here is the idea, given a set of points (neurons) in a 3D array that can allow for any degree of causal spatio/temporal relationship, then, can any dimension be expressed? Or, is it purely an exercise in possible topologies ?Or both?
At the end of the day, no matter how complex the implied dimensionality or topology that the relations of neural interconnectivity implies, within the context of the FCM this only serves as the boundary conditions for an emergent soliton. This begs the question as to how complex a coherent soliton may be?
So, to put all the elements together:-
The brain/space may well be an example of a ‘space’ that is both real and virtual.
The brain is an excitable medium that is organized fractally.
The macroscopic structure of the brain allows for patterns of interrelationship that may correspond to higher dimensions or complex topologies.
‘Fixed Points’
The end result is a complex quantum coherent soliton
.References
"Life, Catalysis and Excitable Media: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Metabolism and Cognition", in Tuszynski, J.A,The Emerging Physics of Consciousness (The Frontiers Collection), Springer, pp.255–292,ISBN978-3540238904
Zeki, S. (1992). The visual image in mind and brain.Scientific American267, 69-72.