pascal fries describes “activated neural groups [that] oscillate and thereby undergo rhythmic excitability fluctuations that produce temporal windows for communication. only coherently oscillating neuronal groups can interact effectively, because their communication windows for input and for output are open at the same times, [subserving] our cognitive flexibility.” Fries, P.: “a mechanism for cognitive dynamics; neuronal communication through neuronal coherence.” trends in cognitive sciences 9, 474-480, november 2005.

in previous blogs and my books i have discussed the importance of waveform coherence and synchronization in the transmission of specified information through synaptic networks. by these actions direction is given to spike trains of action potentials in which neural codes are incorporated within waveforms to bring about specified actions. it is a most complex activity which is slowly becoming understood as more advanced technology is becoming available to neuroscientists.

i will be citing several articles in the next blog posts that speak to coherence and synchronization in neural communication. it is important that this neural activity is documented as it relates to dualist interaction between the immaterial cognitive mind and the material components of neural synaptic networks. these are actions created by God to provide personal bidirectional communion with him.

in chapter 6, section 5 of his book, how the self controls its brain, john c. eccles describes how the concentration of “attention causes neural activity in rather large areas of the brain, as is revealed by the rcbf technique (regional cerebral blood flow). . . . one can concentrate attention to a finger tip in order to detect a minimal touch that is expected,” and it is this focus of attention that results in the neural activity. “in this technique, radio-xenon . . . is injected into the internal carotid artery through a cannula that has been inserted for a clinical investigation. a battery of 254 geiger counters is mounted in a helmet applied over one side of the scalp. the brief injection causes a pattern of increased radioactivity, as observed by the counts of the geiger assemblage. this increase in counts signals an increased blood flow, which in turn gives a quantitative measure of the subjacent cortical activity. the counts are done in the control resting situation and then during the chosen mental task which . . . was a concentrated attention on the finger tip in anticipation of a just recognizable touch.” eccles’ study gave “a clear demonstraTION THAT THE MENTAL ACT OF ATTENTION CAN ACTIVATE APPROPRIATE REGIONS OF THE CEREBRAL CORTEX.”

THE STUDY OF AKGUL ET AL DISCUSSED IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG DREW UPON A BASIC TECHNIQUE USED IN THE 1990’S BY ECCLES. ECCLES’ WORK DID NOT RELATE TO WAVEFORMS AS DOES THE STUDY CITED IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG POST. tHE STRONG SUGGESTION IS THAT COGNITION ITSELF HAS THE CAPACITY TO GENERATE FOCAL CORTICAL BLOOD FLOWS COUPLED WITH WAVEFORMS THAT TRANSMIT INFORMATION THROUGH SPECIFIED SYNAPTIC NETWORKS TO ACHIEVE SPECIFIC ACTIONS. DUALIST INTERACTIONISM IS AGAIN GIVEN SUPPORT.

In 2006 Akgul, Akin and Sankur published an article in Med Bio Eng Comput, vol. 44:945-958, entitled “Extraction of cognitive activity-related waveforms from functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals.” The article describes a new technology to identify cognitive waveform activity. I am posting several excerpts from this article and will show its historical relevance TO THE WORK OF jOHN C. ECCLES in a subsequent post.

“the main objective of most neuroimaging studies has been the precise and accurate detection of the evoked responses to single-event trial stimulation. since the evoked responses are usually minute in amplitude, and deeply buried under the background activity of the brain, researchers have to resort to advanced signal-processing techniques to extract these evoked responses. a promising new neuroimaging modality is the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which can capture cerebrovascular changes in the surface of the cortex. [This modality] can potentially detect and tract cerebrovascular changes, called blood oxygenation dependent (BOLD) signals by the use of optical methods. similar to fmri, fnirs is sensitive to deoxyhemoglobin while complimentarily it can measure the changes in oxyhemoglobin.

“. . . functional neuroimaging studies performed by both fmri and fnirs methods have confirmed that the increase of regional cerebral blood flow towards activated areas exceeds the regional oxygen consumption, and hence the signal pattern observed in the bold response resembles the oxyhemoglobin signal of fnirs. similar to fmri signal analysis, fnirs analysis is concerned with the varying cerebrovascular alterations due to stimuli. these are termed as brAIN HEMODYNAMIC RESPONSE . . . AND THEY TEND TO LAST SEVERAL SECONDS. . . . INDEPENDENT COMPONENT ANALYSIS PROVES TO BE A VIABLE SCHEME IN EXTRACTING COGNITIVE ACTIVITY-RELATED WAVEFORMS. . . . WAVEFORMS ESTIMATED BY INDEPENDENT COMPONENT ANALYSIS ARE PLAUSIBLY RELATED TO COGNITIVE ACTIVITY.”

AS THIS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES WE HOPE TO SEE DOCUMENTED THAT THE IMMATERIAL COGNITIVE MIND GENERATES WAVEFORMS, INCLUDING GENERATION BY CREATIVE THINKING, WILL, INTENT AND ATTENTION. FOR EXAMPLE, CAN THIS TECHNOLOGY IDENTIFY THE PRECISE TEMPORAL ORIGINATION OF AN INTENT TO RAISE AN ARM?

MY NEXT BLOG WILL CITE WORK BY jOHN c. eCCLES DESCRIBED IN HIS 1994 BOOK, HOW THE SELF CONTROLS ITS BRAIN, WHICH STUDIED THE RELATION OF REGIONAL BLOOD FLOW TO THE NEURAL ACTIVITY OF ATTENTION.

In my more recent blog posts and books I have discussed how wave forms transmit specified information in neural codes through coherent synaptic networks. There is increasing evidence that wave forms are generated by the immaterial cognitive mind of humans to bring about certain actions.

Doug rubino and associates published an article in Nat neurosci, 2006, dec;9(12):1549 that addresses this activity studied in monkeys. It is entitled “Propagating waves mediate information transfer in the motor cortex.” The authors report that oscillations in the beta range are active in the motor cortex during motor preparation. They also found that “these oscillations propagated as waves across the surface of the motor cortex along dominant spatial axes characteristic of the local circuitry of the motor cortex. . . . high-frequency oscillations may subserve intra- and inter-cortical information transfer during movement preparation and execution.”

It is my ongoing objective to share documentation in my blogs that the immaterial mind has the capacity to generate such wave forms, reflecting dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material components of the human brain. As i have suggested in earlier posts, such data opens the door to the reality of how the mind of god interacts with the mind of man.

I conclude my posts taken from Dr. john d. jones’ article with his comments on what is required for happiness:

“all humans desire happiness (well being). but perfect well-being requires a complete absence from any evil or defect. perfect happiness cannot be attained in this life since we are never free of evil and defects in this life. we desire happiness to abide - that is continue uninterrupted. the object of our desire that satisfies happiness must be itself eternal and unchanging. so just as if we are to have genuine knowledge, we must apprehend an eternal and unchanging object if it is ever to apprehend the truth free from the possibility of error, so only God can satisfy our desire for happiness since only god is perfectly good and unchanging. moreover our desire for happiness can be satisfied only if we have some sort of existence beyond this present life. since ‘nature does nothing in vain,’ we can conclude that we have a life after our death. if we didn’t our natural desire for happiness would be naturally frustrated.”

and in our lifetime god desires a personal bidirectional communion with his Holy spirit and has created the means by which this is possible in our time and into eternity.

Jones continues:

“having argued that there is a distinction between the mind/soul and body, we need to ask about the nature of that relation. in particular, we want to ask whether the soul/mind can exist apart from the body or separately from the body. . . . the soul is to the body as a captain is to a ship. that is, the captain governs the ship, but the captain is a being that is ontologically distinct from the ship and can exist when not on the ship. . . . the intellectual operation of the soul acts independently of the body. . . . the intellectual soul has its own substantial existence. that is, it can exist separately from the body.”

in making the case for dualist interaction between the immaterial cognitive mind of man and the material processes of the brain’s synaptic networks, we see the mind as the “captain” and the “ship” as the synaptic networks and body, a good analogy. we live to have the holy spirit become our “captain.”

I continue with excerpts from Jones’ article:

“Now a cognitive capacity can only know those things which it is like or structured to know. For example, the eyes cannot apprehend sounds because they are only structured to apprehend certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. similarly for the ears. so as the body is essentially material, the mind can only apprehend material entities through it. but since the mind through reason and intellect apprehends natures which are non-material, the mind must be non-material and different from the body. . . . the goal of this argument is to show that there is a metaphysical distinction between the mind/soul and the body: that is, the body is a material reality while the mind/soul is immaterial.”

dualist interactionism is a concept that supports causal interaction between the immaterial mind/soul and the material components of the body, mediated specifically through the synaptic networks of the human brain.

I came across this work by dr. John D. Jones entitled “The distinction between the soul and body.” Material reductionism does not accept this distinction, reducing all COGNITIVE ACTIVITY (OF THE SOUL) TO THE MATERIAL BRAIN! i AM COPYING A FEW EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION IN MY NEXT BLOG POSTS.

“can mind/soul as reason/intellect be a bodily reALITY OR MUST IT BE DIFFERENT FROM THE BODY? fOR PLATO AND ARISTOTLE, IT MUST BE DIFFERENT. THIS IS BECAUSE . . . THE BODY AS A MATERIAL THING CAN ONLY APPREHEND MATERIAL REALITIES; . . . ‘LIKE KNOWS LIKE’; AND . . . THE FORMS, NATURES AND ESSENCES OF THINGS ARE NOT MATERIAL REALITIES.”

READ ON. MORE TO COME!

In many of my blog posts I am discussing wave forms that are under intensive study by neuroscientists, including so-called traveling waves. It is difficult to find work that acknowledges, or even considers, the role of the immaterial cognitive mind in generating the wave forms which transmit specified information along coherent synaptic networks to achieve tasks. material reductionism still reigns rather dominant in that literature, and the human mind is equated with computer metrics and algorithms instantiated in the brain.

As I have asked in my books and some blogs, so what? Why am i spending time researching this category of neuroscience literature? My response is that our immaterial minds and the brain’s material synaptic networks which allow humans to communicate, to move and to create are the creations of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. That man uses this medium to commune opens the door for the holy spirit to use it as well, acting as our Counselor and helper. it is important that i document this dualist interaction to the best of my ability, drawing upon an accumulation of evidence and abductive reasoning, both valid scientific methods that can draw upon laboratory evidence. in so far as i am successful, it is my hope that this activity will draw people into the kingdom of god when they understand that god still desires a personal communion with us and has created the path by which that happens in our time.