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.

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.

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. (I expand on this point in Chapter Six, Section 6.4, “Information, Its Transmission,” of my book Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man through Neural Synaptic Networks, and in my previously posted blogs, “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two.)

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. (See the blogs above, entitled “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two)

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.

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.

Before the “how” of neuronal transmission can be further considered . . . it must be determined if the cognitive action of an immaterial mind can effect changes in the physical brain, specifically the structure and function of neural synaptic networks. Obsessive-compulsive disorder opens the door!

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)

It is noted in Chapter Five that 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.

In Chapter Five I paraphrase comments by Mortimer Adler who pointed out that humans need their brains to think but that they do not think with their brains.

Adler emphasized the following points:

(1) Intellectual powers and operations of the human mind are immaterial, and the intellect functions with an entirely independent reality;

(2) Human beings can think about what is totally unperceived by the senses;

(3) Mind and matter, mental and physical, constitute two distinct realms, the one irreducible to the other;

(4) An intellectual, rational mind is associated with having a soul that can be immortal, capable of existing apart from the perishable body.

The next series of blogs will address the immaterial and material interaction and its mechanism as presented in Chapter Five.