Visual mental imagery refers to the perceptual experience of “seeing in the mind’s eye.” Mario Senden and coworkers published an article in 2019 that addressed the subjective correspondence known between imagined images and physical image perception and further showed that correspondence exists in their neural representations (https://dol.org/10.1007/s00429-019-01828-6). Visual “imagery-based reconstructions of letter shapes are recognizable [by fMRI] and preserve their physical geometry” in the visual cortex. Their results confirmed “that visual mental imagery preserves perceptual topographic organization” in the brain. Images of letters directly perceived by sight were generated via waveforms (photons) transmitted from the letters perceived and transmitted through the retina and optic nerve to the visual cortex. Of great interest in their study is that imagined letters were also detected in visual cortex by fMRI with the same “physical geometry” or topography. This finding suggests that mental imagery by the cognitive immaterial mind also generates waveforms that are transmitted through coherent neural networks to topographically corresponding visual cortex as neural codes. It is the cognitive mind that interprets the codes as perceived, or imagined, imagery. One can reason that the Mind of God has the power to stimulate neural networks to generate images as in dreams and visions?

In support of dualist interactionism I am identifying a lengthy article by Edward Feser that appeared in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1, 2013. Its title is “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought.” Feser cites comments by the materialist philosopher of mind, Jerry Fodor, who stated, “Lots of mental states are conscious, lots of mental states are intentional, and lots of mental processes are rational, and the question does rather suggest itself how anything that is material could be any of these.” One of the authors, the late James Ross, formulated a “powerful argument for the immateriality of our intellectual operations.” (His argument for the immateriality of the intellect was rooted in the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition.) He identified a contrast between “the determinacy of thought and the indeterminacy of the physical.” Favoring the immateriality of thought is “the contrast between the universality of thought and the particularity of physical processes.” The determinacy of thought was considered by him to be immaterial.

Today in church the speaker emphasized our need to learn to hear the voice of God. I have shared that the indwelling of repentant mankind by the Holy Spirit is a reality today, a reality that did not end with the closure of the biblical Canon as some have believed. I have cited writings of authors who give instruction on how to hear from the Holy Spirit. I have drawn extensively from the literature of neuroscience to explain dualist interaction between the immaterial mind of Man and the material synaptic networks of the brain. Advances in the neurosciences are making dualist interactionism compelling as a process, so that we can be confident that indeed we can be in bidirectional personal communion with the Mind of God through His indwelling Holy Spirit. By the boundless love of God we are offered redemption with the renewal of our souls by the sin sacrifice paid by His Son, Jesus Christ. Upon His resurrection He sent the Holy Spirit as promised before his crucifixion, to live within us as Counselor and Helper. I will continue to post in my blogs findings from the neurosciences that address the “how” of dualist interaction between the Mind of God and the mind of Man. Thank you for your interest.

In my blogs, especially the blog in three parts entitled “Waves in Our Brains,” I have shared how waveforms transmitted through the brain’s neural synaptic networks have amplitude, frequency and shape. Scott R. Cole and Bradley Voytek published an article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences entitled “Brain Oscillations and the Importance of Waveform Shape” (http://dx.dol.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.008) The authors shared that neural oscillations are assumed to have sinusoidal shapes, but in their article they showed “that there are numerous instances in which neural oscillations are nonsinusoidal.” They posit that these features “may provide crucial . . . physiological information related to neural communication, computation, and cognition.

It is remarkable, even inspiring, to realize how our Creator God established the capacity in the brains of humans to process semantic, specified information within neural codes learned over a lifetime, archived in memory and interpreted by the immaterial human mind, created in the Imago dei.

My thesis is that the explanations based on the present materialist/reductionist views on how experiential qualities developed out of inert matter are unconvincing and that an alternate viewpoint offers a more parsimonious and logically coherent account. This is a quotation taken from Leonard Freris’ article entitled “Mind and Matter.” It appeared in Communicative and Integrative Biology in 2014 (http://dx.doi/org/10.4161/cib.26658). He goes on to state that the truth of dualism would support the possibility of the mind surviving the death of the body. “The fundamental problem of Dualism is that it has no convincing explanation of how the two realms of mind and matter interact.” This last statement by Freris underscores the very objective of my studies over the last 20 years, the findings of which are presented in my two books and now in my blogs.

The author asks how experiential phenomena can be physical. The materialist/reductionist agenda is problematic. It is the mind-body problem. He refers to “eliminative materialism” wherein “mental phenomena are considered to be an ‘aspect’ of brain activity,” being physical phenomena. “Cognitive psychology” on the other hand views the brain as a computer. Mental activity is “information processing with experiential activity reduced to a computational process.”

Freris addresses the “mind-body” problem well. He closes with a postscript by Erwin Schrodinger:

But now let us assume that in a particular case you eventually observe several efferent bundles of pulsating currents, which issue from the brain and through long cellular protrusions (motor nerve fibers), are conducted to certain muscles of the arm, which, as a consequence, tends a hesitating, trembling hand to you to bid you farewell - for a long heart rendering separation; at the same time you may find that some other pulsating bundles produce a certain glandular secretion so as to veil the poor sad eye with a crape of tears. But nowhere along this way from the eye through the central organ to the arm muscles and the tear glands - nowhere, you may find, however far physiology advances, will you ever meet the personality, will you ever meet the dire pain, the bewildered worry within this soul, though their reality is to you so certain as though you suffered them yourself - as in actual fact you do!

Deana Vitrano has compared perception and imagination at the visual cortex in a recent article. She presented the findings in her Dickinson College Honors Thesis, Paper 12, in 2012. Her work is consistent with articles that have been presented in the last decade by a number of neuroscientists.

Her study found that imagined patterns and seen patterns produced similar waveforms in 30 college students. Her findings supported “the claim that the visual cortex is activated in a similar manner during both imagination and perception.” That perception and visual mental imagery share common processes in the visual cortex was strengthened by the application of fMRI and PET scans. She recognized the importance of analyzing imagined stimuli that had not been seen before, so that imagined images would not be drawn from memory but were described verbally to the study subject. “The same neural substrates are involved in both imagination and perception.”

Evoked potential waveforms that were recorded were reflective of images that were both perceived and imagined in the “Mind’s Eye.” As I have shared in previous blogs, including “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts 1-3, it can be inferred as the best explanation that the immaterial cognitive mind can generate waveforms that are transmitted through the visual cortex as neural codes that can be interpreted as the images imagined as well as perceived. Her study is consistent with the premise of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material components of the brain’s synaptic networks. That the human mind has been created in the imago Dei infers in a compelling manner that the Mind of God can in fact commune with the mind of Man via the indwelling Holy Spirit, a process supported by the brain’s synaptic networks.

As we consider brain-computer interfaces in the upcoming blogs I will offer critiques based upon the perspectives I have developed in over 20 years of research into dualist interactionism. As I stated in my previous blog I note that authors of neuroscience studies I review often do not acknowledge the causal role of the immaterial mind in the interpretation of their results. A team of scientists from Kyoto University in Japan (https://thenewstack.io/mind-reading-ai-optimizes-images-reconstructed-brain-waves/) have published the results of their studies applying artificial intelligence to optimize images reconstructed from brain waves. It is an elegant study to which I give significant credit for the growth of understanding of how the cognitive mind works in humans. We see in this article that machines are used to decode “blocks” of complex thoughts, to reconstruct memories or videos as they are being watched by study subjects. A reconstruction algorithm is used to decode the content of neural networks “to simulate the same processes that occur when a human brain perceives an image.”

The authors state that “a human brain perceives an image.” Is it the brain or is it in reality the immaterial cognitive human mind that perceives an image and generates specified (with meaning) wave forms that are transmitted through synchronized neural synaptic networks via quantum tunneling as spike trains of action potentials carrying neural codes? These would be the codes that are decoded by the reconstruction algorithm.

The authors “have been studying methods to reconstruct or recreate an image a person is seeing just by looking at the person’s brain activity.” The neural activity observed utilizes fMRI data “taken while subjects were viewing natural images.” It is remarkable how the wave forms studied in the brain reflected what was being observed so closely as a result of the reconstruction algorithm employed. But the ultimate question is where are the images initially perceived? By brain networks or by the immaterial mind? The images reconstructed from analyzing brain wave forms were generated by the cognitive mind and transmitted in coded form to the spike trains of synaptic networks. To their credit the authors “attempted to decode the brainwaves from subjects who were merely imagining the same sets of images, recalling them from memory. Again, the recall is by the immaterial mind which interprets the meaning of the neural codes, and it was the immaterial mind that generated the wave forms that were the subject of study.

It is speculated that the day is coming when mind-to-mind communication will be possible, especially beneficial to people with speech disorders. People may be able to communicate by merely thinking a thought! And the mechanism, I offer, could be as follows: A thought in the immaterial cognitive mind generates wave forms that are transmitted through synaptic networks via quantum tunneling, generating in turn spike trains of action potentials transmitted through coherent, synchronized neural networks carrying specified codes to be interpreted by the immaterial mind. Yes, the neural networks of the human brain are of fundamental importance to the transmission of linguistic codes that are learned during a lifetime and archived in memory.

I highly respect the work being performed by these investigators, but what I find missing is the acknowledgment of the fundamental role played by the immaterial mind which cannot be reduced to the material brain. I invite you to review this work to draw your own conclusion. Is the material brain the source of a thought, an idea or a creative intent, or is it the immaterial cognitive human mind?

In the next blog posts I will address a new technology called brain-computer interface (BCI). Although the articles from the neurosciences I review often fail to identify the probability that the immaterial mind generates brain waves recorded via electrocardicography (ECC), I will make suggestions as to its causal role where appropriate in the context of my research findings and previous posts. This is a technology with promise to provide significant assistance and rehabilitation to patients who lose functions due to strokes.

I now return to posting blogs that address findings from the neurosciences that give compelling support to dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks that are involved in cognition.

My first post addresses the findings of O’Craven and Kanwisher reported in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12:6, (2000) pp. 1013-1023. The authors refer to the “mind’s eye” of mental imagery that engages many of the same cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in visual perception of physical stimuli. Cortical regions selectively involved in the visual processing of a material object physically present show similar selectivity during mental imagery in the absence of a material stimulus. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses in the brain were robust to the extent that a single mental event could be determined with high accuracy in the inspection of raw fMRI data. Their “data are the first to show that the content of a single thought can be inferred from its fMRI signature alone.” I conclude with the authors’ statement, “The present study takes the final step . . . by showing that content-specific neural activity in . . . visual cortex can be created by a pure act of will even when no visual stimulus is present at all.”

The stimulus, whether real or imagined, could have generated wave forms actualized with specification within neural codes transmitting information through synaptic networks interpreted as to meaning by the cognitive mind of the subject.

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, “By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.” Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.” (Luke 11: 14-17)

I conclude posting verses from Scripture (NIV) that reveal the immaterial communion between Jesus and individuals and the indwelling of the mind/soul by the Holy Spirit with its power to commune with the saints. As has been emphasized in my writings, the indwelling of those in repentance continues to this day. It is a bidirectional dual interaction that is beginning to be understood in the neurosciences.