Smithsonian - What Is the Universe? Real Physics Has Some Mind-Bending Answers

Fascinating . . . .

What Is the Universe? Real Physics Has Some Mind-Bending Answers

Science says the universe could be a hologram, a computer program, a black hole or a bubble—and there are ways to check

By Victoria Jaggard
smithsonian.com
September 15, 2014

The questions are as big as the universe and (almost) as old as time: Where did I come from, and why am I here? That may sound like a query for a philosopher, but if you crave a more scientific response, try asking a cosmologist.

This branch of physics is hard at work trying to decode the nature of reality by matching mathematical theories with a bevy of evidence. Today most cosmologists think that the universe was created during the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago, and it is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. The cosmos is woven into a fabric we call space-time, which is embroidered with a cosmic web of brilliant galaxies and invisible dark matter.

It sounds a little strange, but piles of pictures, experimental data and models compiled over decades can back up this description. And as new information gets added to the picture, cosmologists are considering even wilder ways to describe the universe—including some outlandish proposals that are nevertheless rooted in solid science:

Will this collection of lasers and mirrors prove the universe is a 2D hologram? (Fermilab)

The universe is a hologram

Look at a standard hologram, printed on a 2D surface, and you’ll see a 3D projection of the image. Decrease the size of the individual dots that make up the image, and the hologram gets sharper. In the 1990s, physicists realized that something like this could be happening with our universe.

Classical physics describes the fabric of space-time as a four-dimensional structure, with three dimensions of space and one of time. Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that, at its most basic level, this fabric should be smooth and continuous. But that was before quantum mechanics leapt onto the scene. While relativity is great at describing the universe on visible scales, quantum physics tells us all about the way things work on the level of atoms and subatomic particles. According to quantum theories, if you examine the fabric of space-time close enough, it should be made of teeny-tiny grains of information, each a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind and Nobel prize winner Gerard ‘t Hooft have each presented calculations showing what happens when you try to combine quantum and relativistic descriptions of space-time. They found that, mathematically speaking, the fabric should be a 2D surface, and the grains should act like the dots in a vast cosmic image, defining the “resolution” of our 3D universe. Quantum mechanics also tells us that these grains should experience random jitters that might occasionally blur the projection and thus be detectable. Last month, physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory started collecting data with a highly sensitive arrangement of lasers and mirrors called the Holometer. This instrument is finely tuned to pick up miniscule motion in space-time and reveal whether it is in fact grainy at the smallest scale. The experiment should gather data for at least a year, so we may know soon enough if we’re living in a hologram.

The universe is a computer simulation

Just like the plot of the Matrix, you may be living in a highly advanced computer program and not even know it. Some version of this thinking has been debated since long before Keanu uttered his first “whoa”. Plato wondered if the world as we perceive it is an illusion, and modern mathematicians grapple with the reason math is universal—why is it that no matter when or where you look, 2 + 2 must always equal 4? Maybe because that is a fundamental part of the way the universe was coded.

In 2012, physicists at the University of Washington in Seattle said that if we do live in a digital simulation, there might be a way to find out. Standard computer models are based on a 3D grid, and sometimes the grid itself generates specific anomalies in the data. If the universe is a vast grid, the motions and distributions of high-energy particles called cosmic rays may reveal similar anomalies—a glitch in the Matrix—and give us a peek at the grid’s structure. A 2013 paper by MIT engineer Seth Lloyd builds the case for an intriguing spin on the concept: If space-time is made of quantum bits, the universe must be one giant quantum computer. Of course, both notions raise a troubling quandary: If the universe is a computer program, who or what wrote the code?

An active supermassive black hole at the core of the Centaurus A galaxy blasts jets of radiation into space. (ESO/WFI (visible); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (microwave); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray))

The universe is a black hole

Any “Astronomy 101” book will tell you that the universe burst into being during the big bang. But what existed before that point, and what triggered the explosion? A 2010 paper by Nikodem Poplawski, then at Indiana University, made the case that our universe was forged inside a really big black hole.

While Stephen Hawking keeps changing his mind, the popular definition of a black hole is a region of space-time so dense that, past a certain point, nothing can escape its gravitational pull. Black holes are born when dense packets of matter collapse in on themselves, such as during the deaths of especially hefty stars. Some versions of the equations that describe black holes go on to say that the compressed matter does not fully collapse into a point—or singularity—but instead bounces back, spewing out hot, scrambled matter.

Poplawski crunched the numbers and found that observations of the shape and composition of the universe match the mathematical picture of a black hole being born. The initial collapse would equal the big bang, and everything in and around us would be made from the cooled, rearranged components of that scrambled matter. Even better, the theory suggests that all the black holes in our universe may themselves be the gateways to alternate realities. So how do we test it? This model is based on black holes that spin, because that rotation is part of what prevents the original matter from fully collapsing. Poplawski says we should be able to see an echo of the spin inherited from our “parent” black hole in surveys of galaxies, with vast clusters moving in a slight, but potentially detectable, preferred direction.

The universe is a bubble in an ocean of universes

Another cosmic puzzle comes up when you consider what happened in the first slivers of a second after the big bang. Maps of relic light emitted shortly after the universe was born tell us that baby space-time grew exponentially in the blink of an eye before settling into a more sedate rate of expansion. This process, called inflation, is pretty popular among cosmologists, and it got a further boost this year with the potential (but still unconfirmed) discovery of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, which would have been products of the rapid growth spurt.

If inflation is confirmed, some theorists would argue that we must live in a frothy sea of multiple universes. Some of the earliest models of inflation say that before the big bang, space-time contained what’s known as a false vacuum, a high-energy field devoid of matter and radiation that is inherently unstable. To reach a stable state, the vacuum began to bubble like a pot of boiling water. With each bubble, a new universe was born, giving rise to an endless multiverse.

The trouble with testing this idea is that the cosmos is ridiculously huge—the observable universe stretches for about 46 billion light years in all directions—and even our best telescopes can’t hope to peer at the surface of a bubble this big. One option, then, is to look for any evidence of our bubble universe colliding with another. Today our best maps of the big bang’s relic light do show an unusual cold spot in the sky that could be a “bruise” from bumping into a cosmic neighbor. Or it could be a statistical fluke. So a team of researchers led by Carroll Wainwright at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been running computer models to figure out what other sorts of traces a bubbly collision would leave in the big bang’s echo.

Michael Hanlon - The World Next Door: Nine Theories of the Multiverse

From Aeon, Michael Hanlon gives us an overview of the "nine flavors" of the multiverse. The number comes from Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (2011) where he argues there no fewer than nine compatible versions of the multiverse. This article summarizes those flavors and adds some context.

World next door

Nine theories of the multiverse promise everything and more. But if reality is so vast and varied, where do we fit in?

by Michael Hanlon

String Theory suggests that our universe may be like a page in a book, stacked alongside tens of trillions of others. Those other realities would be right next to us now.  

Photo by the Esch Collection/Getty

Our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality is changing faster than ever before. Gigantic observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope on the Paranal Mountain in Chile are probing the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Meanwhile, with their feet firmly on the ground, leviathan atom-smashers such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under the Franco-Swiss border are busy untangling the riddles of the tiny quantum world.

Myriad discoveries are flowing from these magnificent machines. You may have seen Hubble’s extraordinary pictures. You will probably have heard of the ‘exoplanets’, worlds orbiting alien suns, and you will almost certainly have heard about the Higgs Boson, the particle that imbues all others with mass, which the LHC found this year. But you probably won’t know that (if their findings are taken to their logical conclusion) these machines have also detected hints that Elvis lives, or that out there, among the flaming stars and planets, are unicorns, actual unicorns with horns on their noses. There’s even weirder stuff, too: devils and demons; gods and nymphs; places where Hitler won the Second World War, or where there was no war at all. Places where the most outlandish fantasies come true. A weirdiverse, if you will. Most bizarre of all, scientists are now seriously discussing the possibility that our universe is a fake, a thing of smoke and mirrors.

All this, and more, is the stuff of the multiverse, the great roller-coaster rewriting of reality that has overturned conventional cosmology in the last decade or two. The multiverse hypothesis is the idea that what we see in the night sky is just an infinitesimally tiny sliver of a much, much grander reality, hitherto invisible. The idea has become so mainstream that it is now quite hard to find a cosmologist who thinks there’s nothing in it. This isn’t the world of the mystics, the pointy-hat brigade who see the Age of Aquarius in every Hubble image. On the contrary, the multiverse is the creature of Astronomers Royal and tenured professors at Cambridge and Cornell.

First, some semantics. The old-fashioned, pre-multiverse ‘universe’ is defined as the volume of spacetime, about 90 billion light years across, that holds all the stars we can see (those whose light has had enough time to reach us since the Big Bang). This ‘universe’ contains about 500 sextillion stars — more than the grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth — organised into about 80 billion galaxies. It is, broadly speaking, what you look up at on a clear night. It is unimaginably vast, incomprehensibly old and, until recently, assumed to be all that there is. Yet recent discoveries from telescopes and particle colliders, coupled with new mathematical insights, mean we have to discard this ‘small’ universe in favour of a much grander reality. The old universe is as a gnat atop an elephant in comparison with the new one. Moreover, the new terrain is so strange that it might be beyond human understanding.

That hasn’t stopped some bold thinkers from trying, of course. One such is Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University in New York. He turned his gaze upon the multiverse in his latest book, The Hidden Reality (2011). According to Greene, it now comes in no fewer than nine ‘flavours’, which, he says, can ‘all work together’.

The simplest version he calls the ‘quilted multiverse’. This arises from the observation that the matter and energy we can see through our most powerful telescopes have a certain density. In fact, they are just dense enough to permit a gravitationally ‘flat’ universe that extends forever, rather than looping back on itself. We know that a repulsive field pervaded spacetime just after the Big Bang: it was what caused everything to fly apart in the way that it did. If that field was large enough, we must conclude that infinite space contains infinite repetitions of the ‘Hubble volume’, the volume of space, matter and energy that is observable from Earth.

If this is correct, there might — indeed, there must — be innumerable dollops of interesting spacetime beyond our observable horizon. There will be enough of these patchwork, or ‘pocket’, universes for every single arrangement of fundamental particles to occur, not just once but an infinite number of times. It is sometimes said that, given a typewriter and enough time, a monkey will eventually come up with Hamlet. Similarly, with a fixed basic repertoire of elementary particles and an infinity of pocket universes, you will come up with everything.

In such a case, we would expect some of these patchwork universes to be identical to this one. There is another you, sitting on an identical Earth, about 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 120 light years away. Other pocket universes will contain entities of almost limitless power and intelligence. If it is allowed by the basic physical laws (which, in this scenario, will be constant across all universes), it must happen. Thus there are unicorns, and thus there are godlike beings. Thus there is a place where your evil twin lives. In an interview I asked Greene if this means there are Narnias out there, Star Trek universes, places where Elvis got a personal trainer and lived to his 90s (as has been suggested by Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York). Places where every conscious being is in perpetual torment. Heavens and hells. Yes, it does, it seems. And does he find this troubling? ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Exciting. Well, that’s what I say in this universe, at least.’

The quilted multiverse is only the beginning. In 1999 in Los Angeles, the Russian émigré physicist Andrei Linde invited a group of journalists, myself included, to watch a fancy computer simulation. The presentation illustrated Linde’s own idea of an ‘inflationary multiverse’. In this version, the rapid period of expansion that followed the Big Bang did not happen only once. Rather, like Trotsky’s hopes for Communism, it was a constant work in progress. An enormous network of bubble universes ensued, separated by even more unimaginable gulfs than those that divide the ‘parallel worlds’ of the quilted multiverse.

Here’s another one. String Theory, the latest attempt to reconcile quantum physics with gravity, has thrown up a scenario in which our universe is a sort of sheet, which cosmologists refer to as a ‘brane’, stacked up like a page in a book alongside tens of trillions of others. These universes are not millions of light years away; indeed, they are hovering right next to you now.

That doesn’t mean we can go there, any more than we can reach other universes in the quantum multiverse, yet another ‘flavour’. This one derives from the notion that the probability waves of classical quantum mechanics are a hard-and-fast reality, not just some mathematical construct. This is the world of Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead; here, yet not here. Einstein called it ‘spooky’, but we know quantum physics is right. If it wasn’t, the computer on which you are reading this would not work.

The ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum physics was first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett III (father of Mark Everett, frontman of the band Eels). It states that all quantum possibilities are, in fact, real. When we roll the dice of quantum mechanics, each possible result comes true in its own parallel timeline. If this sounds mad, consider its main rival: the idea that ‘reality’ results from the conscious gaze. Things only happen, quantum states only resolve themselves, because we look at them. As Einstein is said to have asked, with some sarcasm, ‘would a sidelong glance by a mouse suffice?’ Given the alternative, the prospect of innumerable branching versions of history doesn’t seem like such a terrible bullet to bite.

Stranger still is the holographic multiverse, which implies that ‘our world’ — not just stars and galaxies but you and your bedroom, your career problems and last night’s dinner — are mere flickers of phenomena taking place on an inaccessible plane of reality. The entire perceptible realm would amount to nothing more than shapes in a shadow theatre. This sounds like pure mysticism; indeed, it sounds almost uncannily like Plato’s allegory of the cave. Yet it has some theoretical support: Stephen Hawking relies on the idea in his solution to the Black Hole information paradox, which is the riddle of what happens to information destroyed as it crosses the Event Horizon of a dark star.
String theory affords other possibilities, and yet more layers of multiverse. But the strangest (and yet potentially simplest) of all is the idea that we live in a multiverse that is fake. According to an argument first posited in 2001 by Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford, there is a non-trivial probability that we, our world, and even the vast extensions of spacetime that we saw in the first multiverse scenarios, are no more than a gigantic computer simulation.

The idea that what we perceive as reality is no more than a construct is quite old, of course. The Simulation Argument, as it is called, has features in common with the many layers of reality posited by some traditional Buddhist thinking. The notion of a ‘pretend’ universe, on the other hand, crops up in fiction and film — examples include the Matrix franchise and The Truman Show (1998). The thing that makes Bostrom’s idea unique is the basis on which he argues for it: a series of plausible assumptions, plus a statistical calculation.

In essence, the case goes like this. If it turns out to be possible to use computers to simulate a ‘universe’ — even just part of one — with self-aware sentient entities in it, the chances are that someone, somewhere, will do this. Furthermore, as Bostrom explained it to me, ‘Look at the way our computer simulations work. When we run a simulation of, say, the weather or of a nuclear explosion [the most complex computer simulations to date performed], we do not run them once, but many thousands, millions — even billions — of times. If it turns out that it is possible to simulate — or, more correctly, generate — conscious awareness in a machine, it would be surprising if this were done only once. More likely it would be done countless billions of times over the lifetime of the advanced civilisation that is interested in such a project.’

If we start running simulations, as we soon might, given our recent advances in computing power, this would be very strong evidence that we ourselves live in a simulation. If we conclude that we are, we have some choices. I'll say more on those below.

First, we come to the most bizarre scenario of all. Brian Greene calls it the ‘ultimate multiverse’. In essence, it says that everything that can be true is true. At first glance, that seems a bit like the quilted multiverse we met earlier. According to that hypothesis, all physical possibilities are realised because there is so much stuff out there and so much space for it to do things in.

The ultimate multiverse supercharges that idea: it says that anything that is logically possible (as defined by mathematics rather than by physical reality) is actually real. Furthermore, and this is the important bit, it says that you do not necessarily need the substrate of physical matter for this reality to become incarnate. According to Max Tegmark, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the ‘Mathematical Universe Hypothesis’ can be stated as follows: ‘all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically‘. Tegmark uses a definition of mathematical existence formulated by the late German mathematician David Hilbert: it is ‘merely the freedom from contradiction’. Hence, if it is possible, it exists. We can allow unicorns but not arbitrary, logic-defying magic.

What does all this mean? If we live in a world of infinite possibilities existing across numerous dimensions, what is the point of trying to make sense of any of it? Does any of it have the slightest bearing on how we ought to live?

For the most part, scientists have no answer to these questions, except to repeat Churchill’s maxim to ‘keep buggering on’. But some have come up with tentative suggestions. Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, has written several commentaries on Bostrom’s simulation thesis. His conclusions are rather depressing: ‘If our descendants prefer their simulations to be entertaining, all else equal, then you should want you and the events around you to be entertaining as well, all else equal … Be funny, outrageous, violent, sexy, strange, pathetic, heroic ... in a word “dramatic”.’

The main thing is to make your story so compelling that people want to simulate you again. Forget being good: what does morality mean in a simulated universe anyway? Instead, be interesting — be Hitler, Jesus or Princess Diana, because it magnifies the chances that you will be reincarnated the next time the universe boots up, or be brought back when the audience decides your character is too interesting to kill off.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about all these arguments is how drily respectable they are. Martin Rees, the British Astronomer Royal, is a fully paid-up member of the multiverse club. His main argument is that ‘our’ universe appears to have been suspiciously fine-tuned to allow the existence of life, the so-called anthropic principle. Change any of the basic parameters even slightly — the strength of the Strong Nuclear Force, or the gravitational constant — and you end up with a dull universe that is either a sea of radiation or a black hole.

There are those who see here the hand of god. Others say that the anthropic principle is just a special case of selection bias. Think of a very fat, very short man who walks into a shop looking for a suit. If it’s a small shop, he would be right to be surprised if he found a suit that fitted. But if the shop was big and had thousands of suits, of almost all conceivable dimensions, there would be no surprise at all. Similarly, we should not be amazed to discover we live in a universe that can contain life if there were a lot of universes to choose from.

Some accuse the multiversers of technical-mysticism, of putting their faith in claims that are fundamentally unfalsifiable. To confirm string theory, for example, would require a particle accelerator the size of Betelgeuse. But those who argue that this ‘isn’t science’ are on the back foot. It is just possible that the Large Hadron Collider will detect direct evidence of the extra dimensions needed by string theory, for instance, and provide hints as to whether ‘our’ gravity is the weak remnant of a force operating at far greater strength in another universe. This could happen within the decade, not in some theoretical Star Trek future. Meanwhile, better telescopes could resolve the issue of whether our universe is really ‘flat’ and infinite.

We should not be surprised by the multiverse. Every time we have taken a look at the world around us, it has expanded. Copernicus realised that the Earth was not the centre of creation. Edwin Hubble realised that the Milky Way was just one galaxy among billions. Now we suspect that ‘reality’ is, in fact, something so magnificently vast that we struggle even to comprehend the parameters of how to describe it. Brian Greene finds this amazing and, clearly, rather wonderful.

So, from my own position of profound befuddlement, do I. But I also find it rather troubling. There are things missing from the multiverse: an intelligible place for consciousness, for one. Then there is the sense that, in a world where all possibilities become certainties and anything that can happen does happen, moral purpose is even more elusive than in the old-fashioned singular universe. If your evil twin is out there (which, in an infinite ‘flat’ universe, he or she certainly is), what does it matter what you do in your bit of eternity? For half a millennium science has been chipping away at the idea that humanity is central and unique. The multiverse replaces the chisel with a wrecking ball.

Published on 6 November 2012

Jeff Prideaux - Comparison between Karl Pribram's "Holographic Brain Theory" and more conventional models of neuronal computation

Yesterday I posted an article from Neuroskeptic on the holographic brain and mentioned the work of Karl Pribram as one of the "fathers" of holonomic brain theory. In looking for additional information, I found this article from Jeff Prideaux of Virginia Commonwealth University that compares Pribram's brain model to other models of cognitive or neuronal computation.

It's a long article, but it's also very interesting. I am not expert enough to say how accurate it is. What I can say is that Pribram gets very little attention anymore in cognitive neuroscience. The holonomic model, to my knowledge, is not widely accepted.

On the other hand, Pribram was among the first to stop doing frontal lobotomies because he recognized the frontal cortex as the seat of executive function in the brain. He was also among the first to recognize neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.

It might be that brain science is only now starting to catch up to his theory of brain function.

Here is the beginning of the article (follow the title link to read the whole article):

Comparison between Karl Pribram's "Holographic Brain Theory" and more conventional models of neuronal computation

By Jeff Prideaux
jprideaux@gems.vcu.edu
Virginia Commonwealth University

TABLE OF CONTENTS (with HYPERLINKS)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2 HOLOGRAMS

What is holography?

The Hologram Relationship

Holograms

CHAPTER 3 EUCLIDEAN-BASED GEOMETRIC MODEL

CHAPTER 4 HOLONOMIC BRAIN THEORY

Experimental Evidence

Other Aspects of the holonomic theory

The Uncertainty Principle

Quantum Physics

Communication theory

Dissipative Structures

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS

General Comments

Conclusions

WORKS CITED

---

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

One of the problems facing neural science is how to explain evidence that local lesions in the brain do not selectively impair one or another memory trace. Note that in a hologram, restrictive damage does not disrupt the stored information because it has become distributed. The information has become blurred over the entire extent of the holographic film, but in a precise fashion that it can be deblurred by performing the inverse procedure.

This paper will discuss in detail the concept of a holograph and the evidence Karl Pribram uses to support the idea that the brain implements holonomic transformations that distribute episodic information over regions of the brain (and later "refocuses" them into a form in which we re-member). Particular emphasis will be placed on the visual system since its the best characterized in the neurosciences. Evidence will be examined that bears on the validity of Pribram's theory and the more conventional ideas that images are directly stored in the brain in the form of points and edges (without any transformation that distributes the information over large regions). Where possible, the same evidence (for the visual system) will be used to evaluate both theories.

1. Holonomic theory where Fourier-like transformations store information of the sensory modalities in the spectral (or frequency) domain. The sensory stimulus is spread out (or distributed) over a region of the brain. A particular example (in the case of vision) would be that particular cortical cells respond to the spatial frequencies of the visual stimulus.

2. The more conventional theory that particular features of the untransformed sensory stimulus is stored in separate places in the brain. A particular example (in vision) would be that particular visual cortical cells respond to edges or bar widths in the visual stimulus.

It will be necessary in this report to first explain the concepts of a hologram and Fourier transforms before the physiological experiments can be understood. Bear in mind that the discursion into these other fields serves a purpose for later in the report.

Karl Pribram's holonomic theory reviews evidence that the dendritic processes function to take a "spectral" transformation of the "episodes of perception". This transformed "spectral" information is stored distributed over large numbers of neurons. When the episode is remembered, an inverse transformation occurs that is also a result of dendritic processes. It is the process of transformation that gives us conscious awareness.

Chapter 2 will outline the basic concept of a hologram and start to introduce Pribram's holonomic brain theory.

Chapter 3 will briefly describe the conventional accepted view of the pathway of neural processing (with particular emphasis on the visual system). The main computational event in this view is the generation of the action potential.

Chapter 4 will review the evidence for the alternative holonomic view. The holonomic theory is based on evidence that the main computational event of neurons is the polarizations and hyper polarizations at the dendritic membranes of neurons. The evidence will be reviewed that supports the notion that these dendritic processes effectively take something close to a Fourier transform.

This is some geeky stuff - but I find it incredibly fascinating even when I feel I don't fully grasp the science.

Tags: Jeff Prideaux, Comparison, Karl Pribram, Holographic Brain Theory, conventional models, neuronal computation, Fourier transform, brain, Psychology, consciousness, holographic model, neuroscience, neurons, polarizations, hyper polarizations, dendritic membranes, neural processing, information distribution, brain regions

Neuroskeptic - The Holographic Brain

Interesting stuff . . . . this piece reviews the findings of a recent study:

Yang S, Papagiakoumou E, Guillon M, de Sars V, Tang CM, & Emiliani V (2011). Three-dimensional holographic photostimulation of the dendritic arbor. Journal of neural engineering, 8 (4) PMID: 21623008

The Holographic Brain

According to the holonomic brain theory,

Cognitive function is guided by a matrix of neurological wave interference patterns situated temporally between holographic Gestalt perception and discrete, affective, quantum vectors derived from reward anticipation potentials.

Well, I don't know about that, but a group of neuroscientists have just reported on using holograms as a tool for studying brain function: Three-dimensional holographic photostimulation of the dendritic arbor.

A while ago, scientists worked out how to "cage" interesting compounds, such as neurotransmitters, inside large, inert molecules. Then, by shining laser light of the right wavelength at the cages, it's possible to break them and release what's inside. This is very useful because it allows you to, say, selectively release neurotransmitters in particular places, just by pointing the laser at them.

There's a problem though. The uncaging doesn't happen immediately: the laser has to be pointing at the same point for a certain fixed time. This makes it very difficult to simultaneously stimulate many different points - which is, ideally, what you'd want to do, because in the real brain, everything happens at the same time: a given cell might be receiving input from dozens of others, and sending output to the same number.

Go read the whole article.

One of the "fathers" of holonomic brain theory is Karl Pribram (his home page) - one of his essential papers, The Implicate Brain, is available online as a PDF. A massive collection of his papers going all the way back to the 1940s is available at his website.

Tags: Neuroskeptic, The Holographic Brain, holonomic brain theory, Three-dimensional, holographic, photostimulation, dendritic arbor, Journal of neural engineering, matrix, neurological wave interference patterns, neuroscience, neurobiology, Psychology, brain, holographic model, Karl Pribram