The Brain as Electromagnetic Field
The predominant paradigm in neuroscience views neural networks as webs of electric current. A usual assumption is that these currents are transmitted by ion diffusion, but it is actually the case that most ion movement in a neuron consists of perpendicular transit through the cell membrane (via ion channels concentrated at the nodes of Ranvier), with the actual signal being a brief disruption or blip in voltage gradients distributed around the membrane, including backpropagation and additional multilinear motions. The electrical signal is a change in the electromagnetic field mediated as voltage transitions, not predominantly a product of particle structure itself. Ions responsible for voltage gradients are actually present in very minimal quantities and near the membrane, so that a neuron requires relatively few ions compared with total size to produce the necessary electrical potentiation. Action potentials, EPSPs, IPSPs etc. are broad fluctuations in the electromagnetic field that greatly transcend local motion of the particles involved.
Supposedly, less axial resistance (lengthwise along the neuron) by way of more sizable neuron diameter increases the rate at which electrical potential flows. This is not however, due to greater diffusion of ions, but rather from closer internode spacing and thus a higher capacity for the voltage-gated ion channels of nodes to register rapidly radiating transitions in electromagnetic field strength via charge-carrying ions despite more diffuse ion concentrations amongst larger intracellular volumes. In essence, a relatively constant presence of voltage gradient in various forms creates a steady electromagnetic field, so that electrical potentials in neurons are more a fluctuation in the field than particle flow.
Local field potentials (LFPs), which are fluctuations in steady state electromagnetic fields, have been observed with electrodes placed in the space between multiple neurons. So-called “extracellular space” (including cells and their medium) involves a complex arrangement of membranes along with associated voltage gradients, and axons, dendrites, dendritic spines, soma, glia, etc. are subcomponents of this overall system, with an axonic action potential for instance measured as perturbing steady state LFPs rather than generating and then extinguishing them.
The significance is that it may be more accurate to think of the nervous system and especially the brain as consisting in perturbations of an electromagnetic field that is in constant supervenience with the organ’s material structure, rather than a phenomenon of neuronal “wiring”, and this lends substantial support to an EM field theory of consciousness. Most of the brain may not amount to electrical transmission, but instead be comprised of EM field fluctuations synchronizing biochemical pathways that are perhaps bound into percepts by entanglement and additive superposition with EM radiation, as per CEMI and coherence field theory.
