Scientific Understanding of Consciousness
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Thalamocortical Activity

Neural Network Multiple Reentry Loops

 

 

 

 

This sketch indicates that neural network reentrant pathways will have multiple loops, containing millions of neuronal dendritic trees accumulating pulse signals, which cause individual neurons to fire whenever a neuron’s threshold quorum of pulses is exceeded during a ~4 ms time window.

This sketch is a pedagogical example intended to represent a vast interconnected neural network with millions of neuronal dendritic trees, each accumulating inputs on ~10,000 synapses.

The shorter local loops will function at perhaps ~40 Hz, whereas the longer multi-synapse loops will function at lower frequency, yielding an overall spectral distribution of “pink noise.”

Signals will propagate along longer pathways as wave functions, with shorter loops joining-in and contributing as they sync into phase with traveling waves.

As traveling waves form the longer loops, the associative property of memory will attract and recruit shorter local loops as Gestalt neuronal assemblies.

 

 

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