Holonomic brain theory

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The holonomic brain theory, originated by psychologist Karl Pribram and initially developed in collaboration with physicist David Bohm, is a model for human cognition that is drastically different from conventionally accepted ideas: Pribram and Bohm posit a model of cognitive function as being guided by a matrix of neurological wave interference patterns situated temporally between holographic Gestalt perception and discrete, affective, quantum vectors derived from reward anticipation potentials.
Pribram was originally struck by the similarity of the hologram idea and Bohm's idea of the implicate order in physics, and contacted him for collaboration. In particular, the fact that information about an image point is distributed throughout the hologram, such that each piece of the hologram contains some information about the entire image, seemed suggestive to Pribram about how the brain could encode memories.[1] Pribram was encouraged in this line of speculation by the fact that DeValois and DeValois[2] had found that "the spatial frequency encoding displayed by cells of the visual cortex was best described as a Fourier transform of the input pattern."[1] This holographic idea led to the coining of the term "holonomic" to describe the idea in wider contexts than just holograms.


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[edit] Background

The Holonomic Brain Theory describes a type of cognitive functioning based on Fourier transformations, which convert space-time coordinate systems (x,y,z) into spectral coordinate systems (each point represented as a fractal). The term ‘holonomy’ was first used to express a specific co-ordinate system along generally-applicable guidelines.[1] Holonomic processing has recently been labeled “Quantum Holography” in its application to image processing in tomography as in PET scans and fMRI imaging.[2] It is also used for processing images in digital cameras. Dennis Gabor, in 1947, discovered optical holography when he demonstrated that the information pattern of a three-dimensional object can be encoded in a beam of light, which is more-or-less two-dimensional.[3] The subsequent discovery of the laser beam added credence to this theory. Star Trek popularized the concept of humans being “beamed” up into space ships, essentially being converted into beam particles through Fourier transformations.
Karl Pribram, who fashioned the holonomic brain model of cognitive function in 1987 in collaboration with David Bohm, conjectured that the reason subatomic particles are entangled is because at a deeper level of reality these particles are not individual but actually extensions or emanations of the same wave-forms.[4] Pribram and Bohm agreed that some sort of “super hologram” contains all the information about the past, present, and future, much like a compact disc that still contains spatial information that can be read, or decoded, by a laser beam. As particles have been associated with wave motions, they can be seen during wave cycles to enter and exit singularity, which is how entanglement (like “quantum entanglement”) is achieved. Scientists in the early 20th century experimented with electrons and discovered the dual nature of these fundamental particles of matter, namely, that electrons, like other quantum particles, are only perceived as individual units when they are in actuality wave-forms existing in multiple spots simultaneously.
An analogy of holonomic brain theory is the way sunlight illuminates objects in the visual field of an observer. It matters not how narrow the beam of sunlight is, it always contains all the information of the object, and when conjugated by a lens of a camera or the eyeball, produces the same full three-dimensional image. The Fourier transform formula converts spatial forms to spatial frequencies and vice versa, as all objects are at root vibratory structures. Different types of lenses can alter the frequency nature of information that is transferred. All of the information contained in some region of space can be represented as a hologram, where all parts reflect the whole on a smaller scale. This is referred to as “non-locality.” This can also explain why some children retain normal intelligence when large portions of their brain—in some cases, half—are removed. It can also explain why memory is not lost when the brain is sliced in different cross-sections.[5] Memories, like cognitive neuronal functions—such as those produced by Gabor wavelets—are diffused throughout the brain in holographic form. Memories and intelligence can be non-local, where the holonomic brain theory crops up. Space-time patterns are transformed into spectrum-based waveforms that encode amplitudes, frequencies, as well as the relationships among their phases. The holonomic brain can process this type of cognition because it can process holographic wave-interference patterns and store information in beams of light.
In the lens-defined model of brain function, a sub-definition of the holonomic model, the human sensory system plays the role of a powerful lens, refocusing and redirecting wave patterns which are transmuted into a language of light the brain can understand; the question of whether the brain understands this by itself or that a higher cognitive apparatus (such as the soul) understands this holonomically through the brain is a matter of metaphysical conjecture. More specifically, sensory systems can be singled out to further apprehend the role of the lens-defined model. Visual images projected in the occipital lobe are a result of the tuning of wave frequencies in cells situated in the primary visual cortex.[6] Pribram and his cohorts also evince that such tuning occurs in the somatosensory and motor cortexes. According to Pribram, "What the data suggest is that there exists in the cortex, a multidimensional holographic-like process serving as an attractor or set point toward which muscular contractions operate to achieve a specified environmental result.” Memories, or prior experiences, are stored in holographic-like form and retrieved through cognition—“free will”—in order to activate the transmutation of thought into reality (e.g. “I think, therefore I am” –Descartes).
Holonomy in brain function is really achieved at the quantum level. Waveforms embedded and spread throughout the matrix of a neural system allow new patterns to be produced via the transmutation of quantum waves into particles and back again into waves, vice versa, ad infinitum.[7] The idea of a "quantum mind" is still debated amongst philosophers and scholars, an ensemble of theories flooding the fore of brain functioning ideology. Notable proponents of various quantum mind theories include doctor and endocrinologist Deepak Chopra, philosopher David Chalmersand, and mathematical physicist Roger Penrose. Holonomic processes are “holistic” as their title implies, and can even be considered “holographic.” They spread patterns everywhere in space and time to entangle the parts with one another.[8] In such a domain of creation, space and time no longer exist and therefore neither does “causality” in Aristotelian mindset. The relationship between cause and effect has always dominated the scene in quantum cosmology and physics, but a new paradigm is being introduced which lends credibility to many of the dead ends being reached by researchers on the conservative level of classical brain functioning and Newtonian systems. Holonomic Brain Theory represents a more whole version—albeit still incomplete—of brain functioning where the constraints do not include space and time, and where science meets the higher dimensions of non-locality, quantum free will, and infinity.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Pribram, 1987
  2. ^ DeValois and DeValois, 1980
  1. Karl Pribram, “Recollections,” NeuroQuantology, September 2011, Volume 9, Issue 3.
  2. Steven Platek et al., “Boldly going where no brain has gone: Futures of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience,” Futures, October 2011, Volume 43, Issue 8, 771–776.
  3. Diedrick Aerts et al., “Quantum Interaction Approach in Cognition, Artificial Intelligence, and Robots,” Brussels University Press, April 2011.
  4. Dr. Mosen Kermanshahi, “Holonomic Brain Theory,” Universal Theory, 2008, http://www.universaltheory.org/html/consciousness/holonomic_brain/holonomic_brain1.htm.
  5. Ervin Laszlo, “In Defense of Intuition: Exploring the Physical Foundations of Spontaneous Apprehension,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2009, Volume 23.
  6. “Lens-defined model of brain function,” Reference.com, 2009, http://www.reference.com/browse/Holonomic_brain_theory.
  7. Karl Pribram, “Holonomic Brain Theory,” Scholarpedia, 2(5):2735, 2007, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Holonomic_-Brain_Theory.
  8. Karl Pribram, Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), 125-150.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Karen K. DeValois, Russell L. DeValois, and W.W. Yund. "Responses of Striate Cortex Cells to Grating and Checkerboard Patterns", Journal of Physiology, vol. 291, 483–505, 1979.
  • Russel L. DeValois and Karen K. DeValois, "Spatial vision", Ann. Rev. Psychol, 31, 309–41, (1980)
  • Paul Pietsch, "Shuffle Brain", Harper's, May, 1972, online
  • Paul Pietsch, Shufflebrain: The Quest for the Hologramic Mind, Houghton-Mifflin, 1981, ISBN 0-395-29480-0. 2nd edition 1996: online: Shufflebrain: The Quest of Hologramic Mind: an in-depth but non-technical look at experiments on the neural hologram
  • Karl H. Pribram, "The Implicate Brain", in B.J. Hiley and F. David Peat, (eds) Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm, Routledge, 1987 ISBN 0-415-06960-2
  • --- 'Holonomic Brain Theory and Motor Gestalts: Recent Experimental Results', (1997)
  • Michael Talbot, "The Holographic Universe" 1991, HarperCollins

[edit] External links

  • "Holonomic brain theory", Article in Scholarpedia by Karl Pribram, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
  • ACSA2000.net – 'Comparison between Karl Pribram's "Holographic Brain Theory" and more conventional models of neuronal computation', Jeff Prideaux
  • NIH.gov – 'Concept-matching in the brain depends on serotonin and gamma-frequency shifts' M. B. Bayly, Medical Hypotheses Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 149–51, 2005
  • ReutersHealth.com – 'Celebrity photos prompt memory study breakthrough: Scientists at two California universities have isolated single neurons responsible for holding the memory of an image' (June 23, 2005)
  • ToeQuest.com 'Holonomic Brain Theory: Holographic Theory offers answers for two main paradoxes, Nature of mind and Non-locality'
  • TWM.co.nz – 'The Holographic Brain: Karl Pribram, Ph.D. interview', Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove (1998)
  • The Holographic Paradigm in Zen and Tao - Zen and Tao studies, Dr. Dino Olivieri (2010)
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