Cognition without a Neural Code: How a Folded Cortex Might Think by Harmonizing Its Own Electromagnetic Fields

Abstract

Extensive investigation of the brain’s synaptic connectivity, the presumed material basis of cognition, has failed toexplain how the brain thinks. Further, the neural code that purportedly allows the brain to coordinate synapticmodulation over wide areas of cortex has yet to be found and may not exist. An alternative approach, focusing onthe possibility that the brain’s internally generated electromagnetic fields might be biologically effective, leads to amodel that solves this “binding problem.” The model of cognition proposed here permits mind and consciousness toarise naturally from the brain as trains of signifying states, or stationarities. Neuronal circuits in suitably constructedhierarchies produce thought by reconciling themselves with each other through the forward- and back-broadcast ofspecific electromagnetic fields, executing a natural algorithm as a harmonized set is selected. Beyond the postulationthat information is encoded in specifically organized electromagnetic fields, the only other “code” necessary is topographic,one that is already known. That the brain might use its own fields to think is supported by the literature onthe widespread sensitivity of biological organisms to small, windowed fields. This model may help explain the coherenceof the brain’s fields, the conservation of the folded cortex, and, in its emphasis on a self-harmonizing process,the universality of the esthetic impulse as a projection of the brain’s basic mechanism of thought.