Nonlocality in time; brain tissue field-potential oscillations

Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 08:33:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mariela Szirko <Postmaster@neubio.sld.ar>
To: quantum-d@teleport.com
Subject: Nonlocality in time; brain tissue field-potential oscillations

Before technicalities, I want to congratulate Charles Cagle, CEO
(I have no idea of what "CEO" is; but, no matters!) for the freshness
of his posting.  Obviously cults' contents cannot be a subject for
our forum; but the connexion among faith values, dissolution of
locality and mathematical articulations, was superbly illustrated as to
recognize in the thirst of transcendence, besides the too oft exposed
industrial and military concerns, another of the promptings that also
motorize physical research.

Now, let me forward an age old question.  Before Berger (about 1927,
I believe) rediscovered the EEG, but after in the 1890's the original
observation of Caton (1875) was recognized, there was a period in
which sundry voices show that the EEG was "impossible". One of these
voices was of a full professor of electrobiology here, Richard Sudnik,
a man with strong theoretical formation who had been in Paris one of the
founders of the Intl. Soc. of Electricians; all what I ought to mention,
just in order to witness the academicity (for the epoch, at least) of
the objection.

In a nutshell, Prof. Sudnik's concern was that stirring charge carriers
inside a closed volume cannot, as per Gauss, yield potential oscillations
detectable outside. The issue remained so, "theoretically settled", some
fifteen years, until in 1906 Prof. Christfried Jakob forwarded his models
of reverberating interferences of nervous "ebranlements" ("impulses") in
brain, building the mental contents.  They were here taken as electrical,
on interesting historic motives that probably are too dispersive to be
included in this account. What matters is the ensuing disputations, regar-
ding the already numerous and well known observations of brain field po-
tentials.  These "ought to have been" muscular, or circulatory; but "could
not" come from Jakob's cortical and corticothalamic reverberations be-
cause the oscillations of charge carriers were understood as owing to
self-compensate, "thermally-wise", inside the closed skull volume.

Prof. Sudnik died in 1915, but Prof. Jakob lived until 1956 and I recently
read a 1968 paper of one of his disciples, sustaining that Prof. Jakob
was wrong on this point; and that the translations of charge carriers in
the brain tissue were not enough to justify theoretically the electroence-
phalographic (less the, by then new, magnetoencephalographic) recordings.
Roughly, for a human brain of some 10 (or 12) Watt,  EEG recordings show
oscillations centered in 10 Hz with a mean amplitude of 40 microvolt
on a scalp surface of 1000 cm2, what should allow to outcalculate
the order of magnitude of the energy losses maintaining dissipatively
the external field.  This magnitude is to be divided among the 10^18 or
10^19 free charge carriers (effectively USED ions) the author mentions.

But I find myself unable to calculate, on that way, a mean speed and path,
on which every of the charge carriers is to be displaced out of the averaged
motions, in order to then compare such path with the compartmentation of
the tissue and such speed with the net viscosities of the medium and ascer-
tain (certainly on a very rough assessment of magnitude) if really the depar-
tures of selfcancellation are plausible.

In this regard I thought that quantum physicists habituated to describe
vacuum quantum oscillations, have tools that exceed my reach and might
be adapted to describe this scenario, whose physiological constraints are
in my field of work.   So I humbly pray for help.  But there is a stronger
preoccupation, still nearer to quantum concerns.  And reading the message
posted today by Charles Cagle, I wondered if he, or others, would volunteer
to co-speculate in this open forum about it.

The de Broglie wavelength Charles mentioned must certainly be much shorter
than the mean separation of 10^18 positive and 10^18 negative free charges
lodged in one liter doped water. But their cycles in time could conceivably
(speculatively) drag a kind of intrinsic adhesion. Or not? Is this too crazy?

I simply chanced to mirror Charles depiction into time, and found the same
suggestion made by the obscure 1968 author, who said (I translate from Spa-
nish): "The continuity between two ensuing EEG potential oscillations could,
in such case, be sought for not only in the causal transformations of charge
distribution that build field intensities, but in some kind of dragging
across presents, intrinsic for those field values and connected with their
own passive relaxation."

Whereas, today, Charles wrote on "the idea of continuous structures.

> Upon this single idea rests all of modern physics.  And if this idea is
> wrong, then, certainly, physics needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
>
> If physics ultimately operates at the non-local level then we should expect
> technology based upon those principles to tap into the entire universe for
> its power.

Well, I am not personally interested in power, but, What would be a
non-locality IN TIME?  How could field oscillations become connected,
outside the space distributions of the charges begetting them? Anyway,
some hundredths of a second, are not far too much time for quantum
effects?

I really hope these questions deserve some comments, not necessarily
complimentary.  Cheeries!
                Mariela

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       Prof. Mariela Szirko,
       

       Centro de Investig. Neurobiologicas, Ministry of Health
& Welfare, Argentine Republic; and
       Lab. of Electroneurobiological Res., Neuropsychiatric
Hospital "Dr. Jose Tiburcio Borda", Municipality of Buenos Aires,
       Office:  Phone/Fax (54 1) 306 -7314
                e-mail <Postmaster@neubio.sld.ar>
       Standard disclaimer: Las opiniones de este mensaje son
personales y no comprometen las dependencias a cargo de la firmante
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