It was by God’s love and grace that direct communion lost at the Fall has been restored between the Holy Spirit and the spirit and soul of repentant Man by God’s grace through the sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God’s eternal purpose has eternally been for direct, dualist interaction between His Holy Spirit and mankind’s spirit and soul. We can pray directly to Him, and we can hear directly from Him in our time. The physical mechanisms that make this possible are God’s created neural synaptic networks in our brains.
Human mind in the divine image
Carl F. H. Henry stated that Man was created in the divine image for an intelligible, interactive communication with God. . . .God created Man as a rational creature whose forms of thought correspond to the laws of logic subsisting in the Mind of God. That God endowed humans with His image includes a structure of reason that reflects God’s own reason. . . . human beings as rational creatures possess innately and uniquely the capacity to think creatively and to use advanced language. Language is a gift that facilitates the personal and cognitive communion between God and humans. We shall see that communion between individuals and with the Holy Spirit is enabled by the semantic transmission of linguistic neural codes learned during a lifetime and archived in memory.
Energy of the mind
Wilder Penfield studied the human mind and acknowledged a spiritual element in Man when he accepted the dualist hypothesis. . . . He ultimately proposed a form of energy within the mind that enables its action on the brain. . . . He . . . asked if there is a force available to the mind which does not depend on such electrochemical circuits but is interactive with it. He posited that the mind has energy, the form of which is different from that of electrochemical action potentials that traverse the axonal and dendritic pathways of neural networks.
Energy from the Mind of God to the mind of Man
Penfield suggested that a transmitting energy from the mind of an external source, whether another person or God, can reach a man’s mind. He further suggested that energy in some form must pass from the Holy Spirit to the human spirit to interact with the mind through patterned, [semantic, with meaning] neuronal potentials transmitted through synaptic networks.
What a thrill it is, then, to discover that the scientist, too, can legitimately believe in the existence of the spirit! (Wilder Penfield)
OCD opens the door
The studies of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) reported by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley have provided compelling evidence that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical human brain by the process of synaptic plasticity that occurs throughout life. Dr. Schwartz’ four-step process for treatment of OCD resulted in significant and lasting corrective changes in their brain’s neural pathways with significant improvement of their symptoms. The changes were induced by the active focusing of attention away from negative behaviors and toward more positive ones without the administration of drugs. Patients learned to reassess the significance of their OCD feelings with the result that the activity of the brain regions underlying their OCD was changed both physically and functionally. The physical changes were documented by positron emission tomography. Dr. Schwartz postulated that the human will generates a force that effects the physical changes he observed in the brain. Mind and matter interact, and the force involved is most likely explained by application of quantum mechanics from his collaboration with Dr. Henry Stapp. More will be posted about the role of quantum mechanics and wave functions in this regard.
Instructions codified in neural action potentials
The immaterial mind does effect physical and functional changes in neural synaptic networks. Action potentials are transmitted along the axons of neuronal pathways as spike trains that transmit instructions. We are learning that the instructions are codified within the spike trains of action potentials with both syntax and semantics, or meaning. The cognitive mind interprets the neural codes through a lifetime of learning archived in memory.
Quantum tunneling and synaptic transmission
Like the Mind of God, who is Spirit, the human mind is an immaterial entity. Action by the Mind of God and the cognitive mind of Man on the brain’s neural networks depends on a nonmaterial, nonclassical energy (which will be discussed in succeeding blogs). The immaterial mind triggers synaptic transmission through the quantum mechanical process of tunneling. In the tunneling process molecular conformations of synaptic proteins in ion channels, synaptic vesicles and pores are probabilistically altered by a nonmaterial energy of the mind. As a result, nerve impulses are generated as action potentials and transmitted across synaptic clefts. The impulses are transmitted as spike trains consisting of neural codes. The spike trains are directed in an integrated, coherent fashion through specific synaptic networks established by learning to transmit meaningful, or specified, information as instructions.
Synapse, a frontier for information
A nonmaterial energy, or power, of the Mind of the Holy Spirit acts through the human spirit and mind to trigger the synaptic transmission of patterned action potentials having meaning. The neural synapse is considered to be a “frontier” across which interaction flows in both directions, and the flow is comprised of information. Since Man has been uniquely gifted with the capacity for language it is a linguistic neural code that transmits information from sender to recipient. The energy is capable of interacting with the classical electrochemical processes of synaptic transmission.
Five components of information
In my books I share that Werner Gitt defined information as “a fundamental entity on equal footing with matter and energy,” though often disregarded in academic discourse. He has identified five components of information that include structure (syntax), meaning (semantics), and purpose. A fourth is the transmission of information from a sender with the expectation of a response, or intended action, in the recipient who must have the capacity to interpret the information received. Finally, the fifth component refers to the intentional selection of information to be transmitted from an essentially infinite resource so that information selected is with a small probability. The selective process consists of a statistical or probabilistic component that gives it specification.
Information in coded form
Gitt identified the one prerequisite of information, that it must be in coded form, the neural patterns described by Penfield. For human beings it is a linguistic code, and the essential aspect of all information is its mental content. The recipient evaluates the message after decoding it, and the code must be known both to the sender and the receiver if the information is to be understood. Matter cannot generate codes. A thinking being exercising free will, cognition and creativity is required. Gitt concluded that there is no known natural law by which matter can give rise to novel information. Neither can any physical process nor material phenomenon do this. Only a mind, including the Mind of God, can generate information, but in our space-time it may require material media for actualization, transmission or storage. Neurons of the human brain serve as the medium for both the transmission and storage of information.
Ultimate source of information
When reference is made to John 1: 1-3 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”) we see that the Mind of God is the ultimate Source of all information. He is the Sender of information actualized in all five levels in the creations by the Son, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Wave forms and the immaterial mind
In the above blog posts I have addressed wave functions AND THEIR FORMS. In Parts One and Two of “Waves in Our Brains” very current information has been included about waves. The question to be asked is how wave fORMs CAN trigger synaptic transmission by the quantum tunneling of quasiparticles, including electrons, along specific pathways in the brain to transmit specified information. Ultimately how might the immaterial mind be involved in the generation and propagation of wave fORMs and quasiparticles in the tunneling process? Answers to these questions are complex and incompletely understood, but progress is being made in current neuroscience, AND BLOGS TO COME WILL ADDRESS THIS QUESTION. The more that is being learned by scientific investigation, the more we realize how awesome is our Creator God, and how much more there is to know!
Wave fields and particles
At this point I will share some concepts about quantum fields and atomic particles. In my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, Chapter Five, I cite von Baeyer who stated that the universe is filled with quantum fields and that there is a field for every elementary particle. He further stated that quantum fields are joined at each point in space-time by intimate bonds that allow them to exchange energy.” He gives the example of an electron being “a ripple in the electron field. A proton, located elsewhere and carrying a different amount of energy as a wave frequency [also with amplitude and shape], is a separate ripple in the proton field.” Each interacts with the other like water waves [with both facilitation and inhibition depending upon their phase relationship]. It is now compelling that mental intention is causally effective in transmitting information with meaning and purposeS THROUGH MATERIAL MEDIA, THE SYNAPTIC NETWORK. The causality appears to be associated with the nonclassical energy of wave fORMs given direction through neural synaptic networks. To come to an understanding of neural transmission it is important to examine neural networks at the quantum level. More to come.
Eccles' microsite hypothesis
Now I turn attention to the how of neural synaptic transmission, drawing upon the neural synaptic model which was the focus for Sir John C. Eccles’ microsite hypothesis. How can interaction between a nonmaterial spirit and mind and the material brain be explained? Just what is the energy that induces synaptic transmission, and how is it related to information? To what degree can a nonmaterial energy be identified in mind-brain interaction, and where does it exert its effect? (I address these questions in detail in Chapter Four, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man through Neural Synaptic Networks.)
Neural electrophysiology and subjective experiences
In the 1860’s Paul Broca and Karl Wernicke identified two regions of the human brain that function in language and bear their names. There are indistinguishable histologic structures and electrochemical activities in these parts of the brain. The localization of sensory circuits to these discrete parts offers no insights into how neuronal electrophysiology translates into such subjective experiences as watching sunsets or listening to a Bach cantata.
Neuronal networks in liaison with the immaterial mind
Eccles hypothesized that the brain’s neuronal network structure enters into a liaison with the immaterial mind and serves the function of a “detector.” Active pyramidal neurons of cerebral cortical modules of the neuronal network interact with the unique function of human cognition. The modules act as “detectors” selectively scanning for consciously willed influences with which they are in synchrony in terms of wave frequency, amplitude and shape. An intention expresses itself through the generation of a pattern of encoded neuronal impulses initiated within pyramidal modules with meaning and with which the mind is in liaison. The pattern generated is as a neural code that provides for operative effectiveness by its transmission through semantically integrated, coherent synaptic networks of the brain.
Intentions and the brain
Eccles hypothesized that the immaterial Self can effectively control the brain through intentions and attentions. Neural responses are induced by mental action by increasing the quantum probability of exocytosis, or the release, of the contents of synaptic vesicles from presynaptic vesicular grids (PVG). The vesicular contents are neurotransmitters that are released into and across very narrow synaptic clefts, a process that has been observed by electron microscopy. Their release is from the opened pores of vesicles that are docked on the PVG and occurs in a semantically integrated fashion within neural networks associated with specified intentional thoughts and actions. Their release stimulates adjacent postsynaptic densities of neurons to induce action potentials that are transmitted as encoded spike trains that the immaterial mind interprets through a process of lifelong learning archived in memory. These induced spike train impulses are transmitted downstream along the axonal efferent pathways of synaptic networks in coherent, synchronized fashion in terms of wave frequencies, amplitudes and shapes.
Specified information
Specified information that is encoded within the transmitted spike trains of action potentials emanates from the cognitive mind of a human or the Mind of God. Since humans were created with the unique capacity for advanced language the codes transmit linguistic information in multiple manifestations. These include concepts, intuition, dreams, visions, discernment, verbal communications and intentions. All are linked with cognitive or physical action. As with the Morse code, the codes must be learned over a lifetime and remembered, being archived in memory.
The Self
Sir Eccles defined the Self as an experienced unity linked by the memory of conscious states experienced over an entire lifetime. For the Self to exist there must be some continuity of mental experiences that bridges the gap of unconsciousness. Self-consciousness achieves public status by symbolic communication through language between individuals.
Unity of the Self
The neural synaptic process gives a central role to the experienced unity of the Self and the interpretive function of the immaterial mind. The self-conscious mind integrates what it reads out perceptually from an immense diversity of encoded neural activities transmitted through what Eccles called the liaison brain There is displayed before the mind from instant to instant the entirety of the complex neural transmissions. Through directed attention, intention or will it selects from this vast ensemble of encoded, synchronous neural impulses within the liaison brain. It coordinates and interprets in coherent fashion the meaning of linguistic codified readouts from many different areas of the cerebral cortex and other functionally associated regions of the brain. in this way the self-conscious mind achieves a unity of experience.
Liaison brain
In both of my books I cite John C. Eccles’ use of the term “liaison brain.” At the time of his writing and research on mind-brain interaction the precise explanation of what the liaison brain is was not known. I offer in my writing based on further research in neuroscience that it most likely corresponds with the ensemble of linguistic neural codes, the immense diversity of patterned, or structured, neural impulse activities with semantics, meaning and purpose.
Supplementary motor area
I am including a detailed discussion of the supplementary motor area (SMA), a bilateral region of the cerebral cortex that functionally includes what Eccles termed the liaison brain. It is now well known that the mental act of intention acts on the SMA’s where there is an inventory of a vast number of the stored, encoded subroutines of all learned motor programs, including those for speech. It provides an entre into specific motor activities that implement particular intentions. More specifically, a mental intention stimulates appropriate modular programs so that nerve impulses are activated from the library, or archive, of encoded programs, the liaison brain of Eccles. The mere thought of a motor action in the absence of a deliberate motor response, such as moving a finger or limb, bilaterally stimulates the SMA’s. This relationship has been confirmed by transcranial magnetic stimulation during PET imaging. It is a prime example of interaction between the immaterial mind and the neuron based codes of the physical brain.
Mind's "finger" on the trigger
Quantum tunneling has been identified as a “trigger” for directed synaptic transmission when the immaterial mind activates selected encoded programs in the SMA’s (also pre-SMA’s according to more recent studies). Hiley and Pylkkanen have proposed a relationship between wave functions and forms and quantum tunneling. Based on their proposal it can be asked if the immaterial mind activates the “trigger” by generating quantum wave forms that transmit quasiparticles, including electrons, by tunneling through the voltage potential barriers of synaptic networks in the cerebral cortex and associated regions of the brain. We are seeing that mind and matter interact and are coming closer to understanding the process.
Power of the Holy Spirit
We recall that Eccles called the neural synapse a “frontier” across which interaction flows in both directions, and that the flow is comprised of information, not of classical electrochemical energy. The discussions in blogs to follow can lead one to consider how the form of energy relates to the power of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 2:4 the Apostle Paul declared, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” The energy discussions that follow offer support for communion between the Holy Spirit and the mind of Man through the human spirit via the synaptic networks of the brain.
Explaining the "trigger"
I continue my posts taken from Chapter Five in The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, expanding on each where appropriate by including explanations based on more current neuroscientific investigations. My two earlier blogs entitled “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two, include more current neuroscientific findings that relate quantum mechanics and wave functions to synaptic transmission. These are complex processes, and in subsequent blogs I will introduce even more recent interpretations of these processes of dualist interactionism.
What explains the triggering mechanism that induces molecular conformational movements within synaptic vesicles, their vesicular pores that open into synaptic clefts and within ionic channels so that the release of synaptic transmitters, the process of exocytosis, is stimulated? Each of these structures consists of molecular configurations of proteins and lipids. Eccles developed the concept that operations of the synaptic microsites involve probabilistic displacements of particles so small that they were in the range of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The vesicle was identified as the key structure on which quantum tunneling caused the release of neural transmitters across synaptic clefts. Eccles and his associate, Friedrich Beck, presented evidence that exocytosis is governed by a trigger mechanism involving quantum level transitions between metastable molecular states. The mechanism involved the motion of a quasiparticle, an electron, possibly carried within a traversing quantum wave of nonmaterial energy at a specific frequency and amplitude. The process corresponds with electronic transitions, such as electron transfer or changes in molecular bonds. The electrochemical process would generate nerve impulses propagated across the synapses of neural networks in which voltage potential barriers are crossed by the quantum tunneling of waves and electrons. Impulses within the spike trains of action potentials are now believed to involve synchronization of propagated wave amplitudes and frequencies comprising neural codes.
Quantum probabilities
I offer an explanation of “quantum probabilities” taken from my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story.
The neural model based on Eccles’ and Beck’s work introduced into the cerebral cortex a quantum probabilistic aspect giving expression to intentional choices that would increase probability amplitudes across synaptic networks selected for functional outcomes from memory archives. Mental intention would become effective by momentarily increasing the probabilities for exocytosis by quantum tunneling in specified neural networks. Large numbers of small probability amplitudes within cerebral modules sufficient collectively to generate action potentials as spike trains with synchronized frequencies would be coordinated to produce a coherent, linguistically encoded transmission of specified information. The information would be sent or received by an immaterial mind, including the Mind of God.
Mind's trigger of tunneling
The question must be asked, what is it that the mind generates to trigger quantum tunneling? Does the mind generate a nonclassical energy? Does this apply to the Mind of God who is Spirit? “Waves in Our Brains,” Part Two, discusses the nonclassical energy in terms of wave functions OR FORMS having frequencies, amplitudes and shapes that are MATCHED in synchrony WITH PYRAMIDAL COLUMN WAVE FORMS so that encoded information is transmitted through selected neural networks with meaning, purpose and intended action. WHERE in the pyramidal columns does the nonclassicAL, IMMATERIAL ENERGY INITIALLY ACT? tHIS QUESTION WILL BE ADDRESSED IN SUBSEQUENT POSTS.