The Brain's Dark Energy

Brain regions active when our minds wander may hold a key to understanding neurological disorders and even consciousness itself.

Key Concepts:
Neuroscientists have long thought that the brain’s circuits are turned off when a person is at rest.

Imaging experiments, however, have shown that there is a persistent level of background activity.

This default mode, as it is called, may be critical in planning future actions.
Miswiring of brain regions involved in the default mode may lead to disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia.

Imagine you are almost dozing in a lounge chair outside, with a magazine on your lap. Suddenly, a fly lands on your arm. You grab the magazine and swat at the insect. What was going on in your brain after the fly landed? And what was going on just before? Many neuroscientists have long assumed that much of the neural activity inside your head when at rest matches your subdued, somnolent mood. In this view, the activity in the resting brain represents nothing more than random noise, akin to the snowy pattern on the television screen when a station is not broadcasting. Then, when the fly alights on your forearm, the brain focuses on the conscious task of squashing the bug. But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all.



It turns out that when your mind is at rest—when you are daydreaming quietly in a chair, say, asleep in a bed or anesthetized for surgery—dispersed brain areas are chattering away to one another. And the energy consumed by this ever active messaging, known as the brain’s default mode, is about 20 times that used by the brain when it responds consciously to a pesky fly or another outside stimulus. Indeed, most things we do consciously, be it sitting down to eat dinner or making a speech, mark a departure from the baseline activity of the brain default mode.

Key to an understanding of the brain's default mode has been the discovery of a heretofore unrecognized brain system that has been dubbed the brain's default mode network(DMN). The exact role of the DMN in organizing neural activity is still under study, but it may orchestrate the way the brain organizes memories and various systems that need preparation for future events: the brain's motor system has to be revved and ready when you feel the tickle of a fly on your arm. The DMN may play a critial role in synchronizing all parts of the brain so that, like racers in a track competition, they are all in the proper "set" mode when the starting gun goes off. If the DMN does prepare the brain for conscious activity, investigations of its behavior may provide clues to the nature of conscious experience. Neuroscientists have reason to suspect, moreover, tat disruptions to the DMN may underlie simple mental errors as well as a range of complex brain disorders, from Alzheimer's disease to depression.

...

The ups and downs of the DMN may provide insight into some of the brain's deepest mysteries. It has already furnished scientists with fascinating insigts into the nature of attention, a fundamental component of conscious activity. In 2008 a multinatinal team of researchers reported that by watching the DMN, they could tell up to 30 seconds before a subject in a scanner was about to commit an error in a computer test. A mistake would occer if, at that time, the default network took over and activity in areas involved with focused concentration abated.

And in years to come, the brain's dark evergy may provide clues to the nature of consciousness. As most neuroscientists acknowledge, our conscious interactions with the world are just a small part of the brain's activity. What does on below the level of awareness - the brain's dark every, for one - is critical in providing the context for what we experience in the small window of conscious awareness.

Source + Scientific American, March 2010 Issue, pages 44 - 49.

I found this interesting. I'm sure many of you will connect this to psi, and paranormal phenomena of the mind. I'm interested in what you come up with. It seems like as soon as we think we know something about the brain evidence emerges challenging that belief, which is cool, it keeps things interesting.

I was interested in this article for its relevence to the problem of consciousness. In reality, though, I think that any explanation of consicousness like this misses the mark completely. This explanation - and all other offered by science - explains consciousness in terms of physical processes. I believe that that is barking up the wrong tree, in principal. Anything that fits within the materialist paradigm of western science in unsuitable for explaining consciousness, because consciousness does not fit into that paradigm. For example we can offer a complete description of the underlying physics of the brain, which would necessarily include all of the information necessary for a complete chemical description, and a complete biological description, without ever mentioning conscious experience or awareness. Consciousness is not necessary for(and in fact cannot be included in) a complete physical description of the brain, yet a complete physical description of the brain would contain the answers to all of the questions that the physical sciences are able to ask. This property of consciousness - that it seems to go unaddressed by materialist descriptions of physical reality - is one of many which causes me to believe that any explanation similar in genre to the one alluded to in this article cannot be correct.

Interesting. If this is true, it could explain why meditative states lead to enlightenment states; the brain is so active while not thinking that it forms so many connections that it exceeds the standard.

"Imagine you are almost dozing in a lounge chair outside, with a magazine on your lap. Suddenly, a fly lands on your arm. You grab the magazine and swat at the insect. What was going on in your brain after the fly landed? And what was going on just before? Many neuroscientists have long assumed that much of the neural activity inside your head when at rest matches your subdued, somnolent mood. In this view, the activity in the resting brain represents nothing more than random noise, akin to the snowy pattern on the television screen when a station is not broadcasting. Then, when the fly alights on your forearm, the brain focuses on the conscious task of squashing the bug. But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all."

I think that this is very obvious to anyone who has tried a "Blank mind" type meditation. Also if jung is correct the archetypes from the collective unconscious must be communicating with us on a subconcious level.

T

I subscribe to the cogntive model proposed by Thomas Metzinger in Being No One and The Ego Tunnel. This suggests that the brain constantly runs a model of the world, and a model of your self within that model of the world. I believe the above article supports this theory. When you stand up and walk out of a room, you don't have to sense the position of your body before you move, and you don't have to relearn the lay out of the room before you leave. You already know these things, which suggests to me that the mind keeps a constant familiarity with ones environment and ones body in relationship to that environment immediately accessable just below the level of consciousness. Keeping this model of yourself and your surroundings running at all times must take constant brain activity in mutliple areas of the brain.

reply to post by OnceReturned


As far as your take on consciousness the closest science model is Dr. Stuart Hameroff's "quantum brain" model relying on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

As far as asking for a paranormal angle on this "dark energy" of the brain:

Fortunately qigong master Chunyi Lin has clearly demonstrated that spiritual healing is real --

www.youtube.com...

Chunyi Lin has been working with the top hospital in the world -- the Mayo Clinic -- and here's video testimonials of people he has healed of serious diseases using mind energy:

www.springforestqigong.com...

There's hundreds of research results showing qigong works -- many from Harvard tests and published in Western peer reviewed hard science journals.

So spiritual healing is real -- the question then is how does one develop it and why does it work?

I did this research for my masters degree -- the main practice is called the "small universe" or "microcosmic orbit" and it's the basis for the kriya yoga lineage in India, mentioned also in Professor Eliade's book on yoga and is the basis for the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" translated by Charles Luk.

You can read about it here as well for free

www.scribd.com...

So the important emphasis is to use the lower body energy as the power for the mind.

I figured out that the ultrasound is created from mind focus and piezoelectric pressure -- and ultrasound then ionizes the electrochemicals of the lower body -- this works through the vagus nerve as parasympathetic relaxation.

And then the vagus nerve vastly increases the serotonin levels in the brain as ionization enables large molecules to bypass the blood brain barrier. And then as more mind focus ionizes the lower body then greater electromagnetic fields are created.

Finally the pineal gland is permanently magnetized. In the Level 3 class of springforestqigong.com... Chunyi Lin touches your forehead to permanently magnetize the pineal gland and then you can transmit healing energy to others through the mind.

The full lotus yoga posture is the most efficient -- 20 minutes is worth 4 hours of any other type of meditation. Chunyi Lin went 49 days in a cave in full lotus in China through qigongmaster.com... -- taking no sleep, no water and no food the whole time.

This is called "bigu" in China -- Chemistry professor Rustom Roy held a conference on bigu and there are Western published results proving people going weeks without water and food while maintaining normal levels of nutrition and health.

I, myself, went 8 days on just half glass of water and yet my electromagnetic mind energy got much stronger -- the top of my skull got soft and pulsated with electromagnetic energy and I could electrolyze water from the atmosphere. I was never hungry and I needed less and less sleep and I did powerful healings on people, also I had telepathy, telekinesis and precognition.

So this is done, again, through the "small universe" or "microcosmic orbit" because the energy first goes up the back and then down the front so it is properly balanced and then the increased electromagnetic energy is stored in the "Lower tan tien" or the energy field behind and below the stomach.

reply to post by drew hempel


Dr. Hamerhoff's arguments do appeal to me on some level, and I've done some fairly extensive work resulting in a published paper on Roger Penrose's similar theory of Orchestrated Objective Reduction. The reason that I am not entirely sold on the quantum explanation is that Max Tegmark and others have made some convincing objections to the role of quantum phenomena in brain function. He and others argue that in the brain quantum decoherence occurs orders of magnitude more quickly that any biochemical processes of significance, and therefore it is impossible to connect the relevant types of quantum effects to consciousness or brain function. My argument concerned the possibility of microtubuoles in neurons having the necessary properties to make the appropriate quantum effects relevent to brain function; which I hope indirectly can connect these effects to consciousness and save the quantum explanation.

Edit to add: I am sometimes concerned about "mystery mongering." I know that consciousness is mysterious, and I know that quantum mechanics are mysterious, so maybe they are connected. I don't want to explain one mystery with another.

[edit on 2/21/10 by OnceReturned]

reply to post by OnceReturned


Well Western science is way far behind on this stuff -- Have you seen the video of John Chang? Amazing stuff and REAL.

www.youtube.com...

Chunyi Lin is very similar -- also Wang, Liping and Yan Xin and Effie Chow in San Francisco... all qigong masters.

Still from the science side -- the problems with quantum mechanics in biology and consciousness is the subject of Nobel physicist Brian Josephson's latest video lecture:

sms.cam.ac.uk...