MLU: You have pointed out that all aspects of your cemi field theory are testable. Has any progress been made on this front?
JM: The cemi field theory predicts that synchronous firing of neurons will have a greater influence on our actions than asynchronous neuron firing. This is because synchronous activity will generate in phase em field disturbances that will have a greater chance of influencing neuron firing patterns. So a major experimental prediction of the model is that willed actions and awareness will correlate with synchronous neuron firing. In my papers I describe lots of experiments that have demonstrated this in animal models and human studies (eg. EEG studies). Since then there have been lots of additional studies that support this coupling of synchrony and neuronal activity. For instance:
Womelsdorf T, Schoffelen JM, Oostenveld R, Singer W, Desimone R, Engel AK, Fries P. (2007) Modulation of neuronal interactions through neuronal synchronization. Science. 2007 Jun 15;316(5831):1609-12.
Abstract: Brain processing depends on the interactions between neuronal groups. Those interactions are governed by the pattern of anatomical connections and by yet unknown mechanisms that modulate the effective strength of a given connection. We found that the mutual influence among neuronal groups depends on the phase relation between rhythmic activities within the groups. Phase relations supporting interactions between the groups preceded those interactions by a few milliseconds, consistent with a mechanistic role. These effects were specific in time, frequency, and space, and we therefore propose that the pattern of synchronization flexibly determines the pattern of neuronal interactions.
And that this mechanism is involved in awareness:
Melloni L, Molina C, Pena M, Torres D, Singer W, Rodriguez E. (2007) Synchronization of neural activity across cortical areas correlates with conscious perception. J Neurosci. 2007 Mar 14;27(11):2858-65.
Abstract: Subliminal stimuli can be deeply processed and activate similar brain areas as consciously perceived stimuli. This raises the question which signatures of neural activity critically differentiate conscious from unconscious processing. Transient synchronization of neural activity has been proposed as a neural correlate of conscious perception. Here we test this proposal by comparing the electrophysiological responses related to the processing of visible and invisible words in a delayed matching to sample task. Both perceived and nonperceived words caused a similar increase of local (gamma) oscillations in the EEG, but only perceived words induced a transient long-distance synchronization of gamma oscillations across widely separated regions of the brain. After this transient period of temporal coordination, the electrographic signatures of conscious and unconscious processes continue to diverge. Only words reported as perceived induced (1) enhanced theta oscillations over frontal regions during the maintenance interval, (2) an increase of the P300 component of the event-related potential, and (3) an increase in power and phase synchrony of gamma oscillations before the anticipated presentation of the test word. We propose that the critical process mediating the access to conscious perception is the early transient global increase of phase synchrony of oscillatory activity in the gamma frequency range.
