Since the cerebral cortex is deeply infolded (to provide a large surface area) and the celerity of neuropropagation across Golgi's layer 1 (the 'molecular feltwork' of the outer brain) has the slowest rate possible in living tissue, we suggest that consciousness, sentience and cognition are wave interference phenomena related to electroencephalographic (EEG) 'rhythms' that appear and disappear for physical reasons. To investigate this proposition, we have likened the outermost layer of the cerebral cortex to the surface of a pond, on which 'brainwaves' can travel and interfere with one another in the holographic mode to convert the neuroelectric patterns on its surface into virtual images and thoughts. We are unconscious when no waves are present, and remain so when the waves are too widely spaced to produce continuous activity on the brain's outer surface. But, as that wave-spacing decreases (i.e. EEG frequency rises), we experience REM sleep and dreams, then awareness, alertness and heightened sentience and cognition until we reach an upper state of unconsciousness when there is no longer time for our brain to be renourished during the refractory period of its neurons. These physical results may be hard to accept, but they account for the limits of consciousness (discussed quantitatively later on) and show why thoughts can seem like frequency-dependent 'phantoms of the brain'. They arise, as a virtual aspect of real biologic processes, from patterns of neurodischarge on the paleo- and neo-cortices which engender (respectively) the somatic and carnal realisms of our mind and the abstract creations of our intellect.
Copyright 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.