Thursday, April 18, 2013

Meeting of the Minds: Interview with Karl Pribram


Karl H. Pribram is a seminal figure in the history of neuroscience and the study of consciousness. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, his work in neurobiology established the prefrontal cortex as the seat of executive function. With that discovery, Pribram became instrumental in ending the barbaric practice of frontal lobotomies.

Here is a brief section of the Wikipedia entry on Pribram's Holonomic Brain Model:
The Holonomic Brain Theory describes a type of cognitive functioning based on Fourier transformations, which convert space-time coordinate systems (x,y,z) into spectral coordinate systems (each point represented as a fractal). The term ‘holonomy’ was first used to express a specific co-ordinate system along generally-applicable guidelines.[1] Holonomic processing has recently been labeled “Quantum Holography” in its application to image processing in tomography as in PET scans and fMRI imaging.[2] It is also used for processing images in digital cameras. Dennis Gabor, in 1947, discovered optical holography when he demonstrated that the information pattern of a three-dimensional object can be encoded in a beam of light, which is more-or-less two-dimensional.[3] The subsequent discovery of the laser beam added credence to this theory. Star Trek popularized the concept of humans being “beamed” up into space ships, essentially being converted into beam particles through Fourier transformations. 
Karl Pribram, who fashioned the holonomic brain model of cognitive function in 1987 in collaboration with David Bohm, conjectured that the reason subatomic particles are entangled is because at a deeper level of reality these particles are not individual but actually extensions or emanations of the same wave-forms.[4] Pribram and Bohm agreed that some sort of “super hologram” contains all the information about the past, present, and future, much like a compact disc that still contains spatial information that can be read, or decoded, by a laser beam. As particles have been associated with wave motions, they can be seen during wave cycles to enter and exit singularity, which is how entanglement (like “quantum entanglement”) is achieved. Scientists in the early 20th century experimented with electrons and discovered the dual nature of these fundamental particles of matter, namely, that electrons, like other quantum particles, are only perceived as individual units when they are in actuality wave-forms existing in multiple spots simultaneously.
This is a short interview, but there are not a lot of videos of Pribram on the web. Fortunately, he has put many (maybe most) of his papers online.

Meeting of the Minds: Interview with Karl Pribram



Karl H. Pribram is a professor at Georgetown University, in the United States, and an emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at Stanford University and distinguished professor at Radford University. Board-certified as a neurosurgeon, Pribram did pioneering work on the definition of the limbic system, the relationship of the frontal cortex to the limbic system, the sensory-specific "association" cortex of the parietal and temporal lobes, and the classical motor cortex of the human brain.

To the general public, Pribram is best known for his development of the holonomic brain model of cognitive function and his contribution to ongoing neurological research into memory, emotion, motivation and consciousness. He is married to American best selling author Katherine Neville.

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