One can only conclude that conscious attention adds something to brain-action that would otherwise leave no record. It gives to the passage of neuronal potentials an astonishing permanence of facilitation for the later passage of current, as though a trail had been blazed through the seemingly infinite maze of neurone connections. . . . Permanent facilitation of a patterned sequence in these brain mechanisms is established only when there is a focusing of attention on the phenomenon that corresponds to it in consciousness.
If previous decision regarding the focusing of attention is made in the mind, then it is the mind that decides when the facilitating engram is to be added. One may assume that it is the highest brain mechanism that initiates the brain action associated with that decision. One may assume, too, that the engram is simultaneously added to conditioned reflexes and to the sequential record of conscious experience.
Is there any evidence of the existence of neuronal activity within the brain that would account for what the mind does?
My two books and the blog, “Waves in Our Brain,” Parts One and Two, address these comments by Dr. Penfield in considerable detail. In contemporary terms he is addressing the function of the liaison brain and its linguistic codes (facilitating engrams) established through a lifetime of experience and archived in memory. The attention, will and intention of the immaterial mind possess a nonclassical energy that works through the linguistic codes of the liaison brain (Penfield’s highest brain mechanism) to effect functional neuronal activities via synaptic networks, such as lifting an arm, speaking a phrase or expressing an idea.