Consciousness is physically integrated, and causally active, information encoded in the brain’s global electromagnetic field, according to the conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field theory developed by University of Surrey’s Professor Johnjoe McFadden.
Early theories on what our consciousness is and how it has been created tended towards the supernatural, suggesting that humans and probably other animals possess an immaterial soul that confers consciousness, thought and free will — capabilities that inanimate objects lack.
Most scientists today have discarded this view, known as dualism, to embrace a ‘monistic’ view of a consciousness generated by the brain itself and its network of billions of nerves.
By contrast, Professor McFadden proposes a scientific form of dualism based on the difference between matter and energy, rather than matter and soul.
His cemi field theory is based on scientific fact: when neurons in the brain and nervous system fire, they not only send the familiar electrical signal down the wire-like nerve fibers, but they also send a pulse of electromagnetic energy into the surrounding tissue.
Such energy is usually disregarded, yet it carries the same information as nerve firings, but as an immaterial wave of energy, rather than a flow of atoms in and out of the nerves.
This electromagnetic field is well-known and is routinely detected by brain-scanning techniques such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) but has previously been dismissed as irrelevant to brain function.
Instead, Professor McFadden proposes that the brain’s information-rich electromagnetic field is in fact itself the seat of consciousness, driving ‘free will’ and voluntary actions.
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