The origins of the brain's endogenous electromagnetic field and its relationship to provision of consciousness.
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience June 1, 2014 C G Hales
A biophysically realistic mechanism is proposed for how the brain's endogenous electromagnetic (EM) field could originate consciousness. The spatial and temporal coherent action of transmembrane ion channel currents, acting like tiny current filaments, produces electric and magnetic fields that dominate all other field sources. Computational exploration of a realistic hippocampus CA1 pyramidal neuron reveals that action potential signaling creates a highly structured, focused, and directed "sweeping-lighthouse beam" that "illuminates" neighbors at millimeter scales. This offers a possible explanation for EEG/MEG origins and functional EM coupling. An EM field decomposition reveals objective and subjective perspectives intrinsic to membrane-centric field dynamics, where perceptual "fields" operate as collective virtual EM-boson composites called qualeons, offering a physically plausible route to solving the "hard problem" of consciousness.