Mass Action

in the Nervous System

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Our aim is to understand how immense numbers of neurons in brains coordinate to create thought that guides intelligent behavior. We extract patterns from action potentials and electrocorticograms (ECoG) of animals and scalp EEGs of human volunteers. The patterns drive theories of brain function. We use theories to design and refine new methods that give us the high spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution we need to discover and measure the patterns of neural activity that create and control thought. These graphs summarize cinematically our main discovery: the wave packet, which we propose is the basic unit of thought. It is a self-organized burst of 3-5 cycles of narrow-band oscillation in the beta-gamma range, which synchronizes the firing of millions of cortical neurons (first frame). The cognitive content of the packet is conveyed in the amplitude modulation of the wave (second frame). Each packet is initiated by a phase transition through a singularity, which is a discontinuity in brain dynamics occasioned by a brief breakdown in coordination. It is seen in a null spike (third frame). The packet is bounded by its phase modulation and stabilized by a vortex (fourth frame). We postulate that thought consists in a nested hierarchy of scale-free wave packets, which range in size from cortical columns to the entire cerebral cortex. Wave packets can be laboriously extracted one-by-one from the on-going ECoG and EEG of conscious subjects. By introducing all aspects of our discovery, our web site shows how to do this. Welcome to Sulcus!