E. Roy Johhn's Field Theory of Consciousness

[Peter Cariani]

Dear Shima and Frances,

Yesterday as I was looking for early references to brain rhythms and memory processes,

I revisited an article by E. Roy John c. 2001 that seems apropos to your field theory.

Roy John was a follower of Karl Lashley who developed a theory of brain function based on temporal patterns of neuronal activity. Walter Freeman and Karl Pribram were two of his contemporaries. He studied an incredibly wide range of neuronal phenomena, mostly through the lens of EEG and averaged evoked potentials. An earlier theory of his (c. 1990) was based on the "hyperneuron" concept -- a set of globally coherent mutually reinforcing processes (not unlike autopoietic systems, albeit with patterns of neuronal spike productions rather than material components).

He did not get a great deal of traction within mainstream neuroscience (many people were skeptical of his interpretations of data), so his work has been all but forgotten (collective memory in neuroscience only goes back ~ 2 decades). Nevertheless, I think the paper is a good touchstone for those who want to try to relate neuronal processes with field- and quantum-related concepts from physics. I think it is absolutely critical to postulate some sort of remotely plausible neuronal linkage. I don't agree with ERJ's putative "ion clouds" idea (p. 207), nor with the idea that informational states of brains might be based on global electrical fields (from population generated field potentials) -- from what I have seen, these informational states appear to be based on patterns of (axon mediated) spiking activity rather than on (mostly dendritic) field potentials and/or nonlocal ephaptic effects. 

Peter Cariani

John, E.R. (2001). A field theory of consciousness. Conscious Cogn 10(2), 184-213. doi: 10.1006/ccog.2001.0508.

ABSTRACT

This article summarizes a variety of current as well as previous research in support of a new theory of consciousness. Evidence has been steadily accumulating that information about a stimulus complex is distributed to many neuronal populations dispersed throughout the brain and is represented by the departure from randomness of the temporal pattern of neural discharges within these large ensembles. Zero phase lag synchronization occurs between discharges of neurons in different brain regions and is enhanced by presentation of stimuli. This evidence further suggests that spatiotemporal patterns of coherence, which have been identified by spatial principal component analysis, may encode a multidimen- sional representation of a present or past event. How such distributed information is inte- grated into a holistic percept constitutes the binding problem. How a percept defined by a spatial distribution of nonrandomness can be subjectively experienced constitutes the problem of consciousness. Explanations based on a discrete connectionistic network cannot be reconciled with the relevant facts. Evidence is presented herein of invariant features of brain electrical activity found to change reversibly with loss and return of consciousness in a study of 176 patients anesthetized during surgical procedures. A review of relevant research areas, as well as the anesthesia data, leads to a postulation that consciousness is a property of quantumlike processes, within a brain field resonating within a core of struc- tures, which may be the neural substrate of consciousness. This core includes regions of the prefrontal cortex, the frontal cortex, the pre- and paracentral cortex, thalamus, limbic system, and basal ganglia.  2001 Academic Press

Key Words: consciousness; field theory; synchrony; coherence; anesthetic effects; QEEG; tomography.