In recent years, science has achieved impressive results in interfacing certain cerebral functions to electronic and electromechanical equipment.
More and more funds are devoted to scientific research on brain interfaces, that is, machinery that interprets the "signals" leaving (or entering) the brain.
In spite of this, when it comes to what happens inside the brain is concerned, science is in the dark.
We saw in the Manifestation and Science paragraph (⇒) the statement of Professor W. J. Freeman, neuroscience luminary, on science's lack of understanding of the fundamental link between the microscopic and macroscopic aspects of the brain.
Official science's macroscopic model of brain function is the local storage model, according to which the brain stores information in certain zones of the brain, and each zone of the brain is used to perform a certain task.
This model was born from the fact that when carrying out certain activities, electromagnetic signals caused by brain activations are detected in certain areas of the brain. It was therefore believed that each area of the brain is dedicated to a particular function; for example, if you are playing music, the brain will activate the areas dedicated to music.
The main logical reason why the local storage model cannot be correct is that numerically there would be no room in the brain for all memories and all learned abilities. Our brain is about 1.3 Kg and consists of approximately 100 billion (1011) neurons and one million billion synapses (1015); although these numbers may seem astronomical, they really are not.
Probably only people who work with digital memories can quickly realise the amount of data needed to store a memory; others will need to make more of an effort to imagine this.
A trivial memory, e.g., “yesterday's shopping at the supermarket”, is surrounded by thousands of details, and each of them would need millions of neurons to be stored: the clothes that you wore, the bags you brought, where you parked the car, the people you met, the fruit you bought, the cheese you chose, the people with whom you stood in line at the counter, the money you paid, the feelings that you felt when you got back in the car, and so on. Every detail has hundreds of sub-details: the faces, the clothing, the build, the gait, the voice, the characteristics of the people you met; the fruit that you looked at, what you touched, what you chose and what you put back, the quantities and prices of fruit that you bought; the brands, the offers, the expiration dates, the flavours that you imagined when you were buying the cheese. And from those sub-details, we can also remember other descriptive details, such as colour, texture, smell, maturation, size, temperature, and other details associated with each item you have selected.
And so on... even those tiny details you don't think you remember have been memorised, and a good therapist could bring them back with a regressive session.
We must realise that the brain does not have a synapse for apples, one for mozzarella, one for rice... for each object, a very large number of synapses are required.
In fact, a neuronal synapse which can be thought of as a primary unit of storage, can be considered approximately as a binary entity: the passage of the action potential (bio-signal) through the synapse could be considered a "1" binary while the absence of the passage of the action potential as a "0" binary[10].
If we, therefore, consider a synapse to be a binary digit within a binary number, in order to specify any object with the use of synapses, you would need to use a binary number with a very high number of binary digits, which is to say, lots of synapses. For each object, we should have an elevated number of dedicated neurons for the colour of the object, including all the different shades and tones of the colour itself. We should have other neurons to memorise information about the shape of the object, the dimensions, and the irregularities in its form.
We should have neurons to store information regarding surface roughness, sensations to touch, temperature.
During a well-done regressive session, a patient who is reliving their memories is also remembering the thoughts, impressions, or fantasies that went through their heads. In the example of the memory of “yesterday's shopping at the supermarket”, a person might remember the taste they imagined while choosing a certain food. All of these details should be memorised somewhere in the brain according to the local storage model.
Let's again take the example of the memory of “yesterday's shopping at the supermarket”. Let us consider the huge number of synapses needed to memorise a simple object; this and much other information should be stored for each item purchased during the shopping - an incalculable amount of information to memorise, even without considering that “yesterday's shopping at the supermarket” is just one of many memories in life.
It would take an innumerable amount of memorised data to binarily memorise all the information of the memories of an entire lifetime. While the number of synapses and neurons within the brain is remarkably large, it is impossible to think all of this information can be memorised... especially considering the brain serves many other complex functions besides storing memories.
To justify the objective impossibility of the brain's ability to store an entire life's worth of memories, some speculate that memories are simplified and that only some fundamental details are stored. According to believers of this theory, when recalling a memory, the brain reconstructs the memory from these few key details.
If this were true, when storing the memory, the brain would need to execute a complex algorithm in order to identify which details of the memory are to be considered fundamental, therefore requiring storage, while all other details would be discarded. If such a theory were true, the brain would require an even more complex algorithm to be able to reconstruct the memory from those few fundamental details stored without entering imagined information... thus the less fundamental details are stored into the brain, more difficult is to reconstruct a coherent memory[11].
It is not difficult to guess that if this theory were true, there would be no common memories, as the brains of all people who would share the same experience would reconstruct the memory differently by virtue of having different algorithms[12].
Let us recall again that with regression, in the hands of an excellent therapist, we can access with precision very small details of our memories, in a way that is completely coherent and consistent with memories shared by other people.
This analysis has failed to take into account that neurons do not only serve to store memories but also to manage the various sensory, psychomotor[13], bio-physical, etc., activities, all of which are extremely complex. This would leave little available space in the brain for the allocating memories activity, thus rendering the classical idea that memories are stored in the brain even more absurd.
We should also consider very complex brain activities such as the activities of the mind; that is, consciousness, sensation, perception, thought, intuition, reason, and will[14] - all activities that would require a very complex neural network in order to take shape, that is, a huge quantity of neurons.
We should also add the processing of the five senses, whose complexities are still unknown: we do not even have the faintest idea how and where the brain creates the images that we perceive from bioelectrical signals coming to the cerebral cortex.
No, when it comes to the local storage model, the numbers simply do not add up.
The local storage model becomes even less valid when we consider the animal kingdom, such as the amazing abilities of the octopus, who, with a nervous system that is very small compared to ours, should not be able to carry out any activity defined as intelligent.
In fact, all neuroscience researchers agree that if humans had brains a thousand times smaller than their current size, weighing only 1.3 grams with 108 neurons and 1012 synapses, we would not be able to do anything but vegetate. One wonders, then, how an octopus, with a nervous system with a number of neurons to the order of 108, demonstrates such acute intelligence, capable of solving logical and complex problems, as well as being capable of controlling bodily shape and colour mutations requiring complex brain control.
Again, the numbers just don't add up.
Even the less prepared reader will have realised that the local storage model of the brain is incorrect.
There are other models that have been developed to try to understand how the brain works. One of these hypothesises that the number of neurons and synapses might be sufficient if each memory were to employ logic for the association of information stored previously in the other memories; in this case, it would not be necessary to store all the information of the memory, but only references to previously-stored memories.
A rough example: if the purchase of some bananas had been stored in the upper-left area of the occipital lobe, the memory of bananas' colour stripes refers to the memory of some similar stains stored years before in the centre-right area of the occipital lobe, while the memory of the shape of bananas refers to other shapes seen months ago previously allocated in another area of the brain; the memories of the bananas' other details would be scattered in other areas of the brain.
Thus, in order to be able to store and remember a relatively uncomplicated memory such as this, one must access various areas of the brain for reference. A scarcely complex memory would require the activation of all areas of the brain, so that memory would no longer be localised in a part of the brain, but spread throughout the whole brain.
This model is in sharp contrast to the local storage model, according to which each memory should be allocated in a specific area of the brain, which is supported by measurements of electromagnetic fields of brain activations.
Aware of the impossibility of the brain's ability to storing all the memories, some supporters of the local storage model embrace this theory, which states that “the brain can memorise because it is able to forget”, thus leaving room for future memories. This is one of those cases when an incorrect model leads to other incorrect sub-models.
Memories remain, they are not lost. Although you may be under the impression that you have forgotten some of your rarely-accessed memories, nothing is forgotten. Most of the memories and their many details remain.
Excepting pathological cases, the brain does not have the ability to forget one memory to make room for another; otherwise, such forgotten memories would no longer be recoverable in any way.
As already mentioned several times, with appropriate regression techniques, even memories so remote that they might seem forgotten can resurface, with all the details just as they were stored in the memory.
It must be emphasised that regression, properly and professionally done, cannot be re-lived by a patient in a hypnotic state. A hypnotic state (from the Greek “hypnos”, or “sleep”) is not an ideal state in which to revive memories in a precise manner. Hypnosis is a methodology for inducing a “drowsy” altered state of consciousness, where the patient's perceptual channels are reduced to minimal function and the patient is also highly suggestible; this makes hypnosis a useful methodology for many therapeutic purposes, but not for regressions.
In order to perform a regression optimally, the patient's perceptual channels must be as active and receptive as possible, that is, inducing an "alert" altered state of consciousness, which constitutes the opposite of a hypnotic state.
A person in an ordinary state of consciousness, that is, in a condition where personal consciousness is in its "normal" state, can "not remember" a memory or "remember" it incorrectly for various reasons that we will not discuss in this text. Bringing such a person into an "alert" altered state of consciousness, and then properly performing a regression, the same memory will emerge, exactly correct.
If the memory that emerged in an altered state of consciousness is not precisely consistent with what was stored, then an error of method has occurred; that is, altered state of consciousness was improperly induced or an inappropriate altered state of consciousness was induced.
Researchers who embrace the local storage model of the brain, reinforce their beliefs by holding up brain activities detected by machines according to the activity the subject is performing and deducing from them that knowledge of that activity is stored in certain areas of the nervous system identified by those machines. The reality does not quite match up with this, but it seems that science remains obstinate in refusing to evaluate other hypotheses.
Long-term memory is not localised in the brain, but in other dimensions that we will call Extramental Dimensions.
The brain activity detected during the performance of certain activities is not due to neural circuits "activating" in order to provide memories so that the subject performs the desired activity, as is erroneously believed, but rather are manifestations of access to other dimensions where the memory is located.
Karl Lashley spent 35 years of his life trying to figure out where the brain stored a certain memory. Starting from the '20s, Lashley carried out an extremely long series of experiments, which should have ended the discourse surrounding the validity of the local storage model, shelving any theory in favour of it.
The idea behind Karl Lashley's experiments was that, if a memory was stored in a certain part of the brain, with a targeted lobotomy it would be possible to "surgically" remove that memory.
The following figure is a simple illustration of the supposed effects of a lobotomy targeted at the area of the brain where the memory of the "blue house" is lodged, according to the local storage model.
Il. 6: targeted lobotomy in according to the local storage model.
In the most representative series of experiments, Karl Lashley took a number of rats and taught them the path of a complex maze in order to reach an area with cheese. According to the local storage model, to which Lashley referred, the memory of such a path should have been stored in a specific area of the rats' brains.
With no way of discerning the part of the rats' brains in which the memory was located, Lashley was forced to remove large portions of the brain. Lashley subdivided the rats into several groups and performed a lobotomy on a different part of the brain for each group, so that the rats belonging to a certain group had all received the same kind of lobotomy, which differed from the other groups' lobotomies. Lashley did not exclude any part of the brain from lobotomy within these groups.
According to the local storage model, all rats belonging to at least one group should have surgically forgotten the path of the maze to reach the cheese. In other words, the rats belonging to the groups whose lobotomies did not affect the parts of the brain where the memory of the maze path was stored would necessarily remember the path; while the rats belonging to the groups whose lobotomies did affect the parts of the brain where memory of the maze path was stored would necessarily forget the path of the labyrinth have previously learned.
Unfortunately for Lashley, the fact is that the experiments did not achieve the intended result: after a recovery period following the cruel lobotomy, all rats of all groups remembered the path of the maze to reach the cheese.
The only argument that could be attributed to this result was that the memory of the maze path was not localised in the rats' brains.
With this, the shaky local storage model should have been sunk then and there: memory is not localised within the brain.
In the early 1980s, the neurologist Dr John Lorber examined more than 600 cases of patients who, due to various pathologies, had a reduced volume of brain mass. Some of these patients were apparently very normal people, with a normal life and an IQ above 100. Among the various patients, a young English student stood out; he not only had a normal social life but was one of the best students within mathematics department of his university. Dr Lorber wrote of him: - There's a young student at this university ... who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honours degree in mathematics, and is socially completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain ... instead of the normal 4.5 centimetre thickness of brain tissue between the ventricles and the cortical surface, he has just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimetre or so. -
Of course, neither the memory nor intelligence of that boy is housed in the brain, as that boy is practically brainless.
If neither memory nor intelligence resides in the brain, the only conclusion one can reach is the introduction of a new model to explain the functioning of the brain is needed.
The Holonomic Brain physical model, presented by K. Pribram and D. Bohm, is the model closest to how the brain truly functions.
This model posits that memory storage is not local, but rather that the brain functions as a holographic network.
The basis of this theory was put forward by D. Gabor, while holographic mathematical memory was developed by his colleague, P. J. Van Heerden, in 1963.
Experiments by Braitenberg and Kirschfield in 1967 supported the idea that memory is not localised in the brain.
The brain's functioning is a complex extension of the Holonomic Brain model. Even if we were to devote many pages to a description of the brain's functioning, because of our four-dimensional space-time perception, we would not be able to fully understand it. We shall therefore introduce the following simplified model, which uses different and elementary concepts:
First, what we know as long-term memory is not localised in the brain, but in other dimensions that fall outside of our current understanding, which we can call Extramental Dimensions.
The brain does not store memory, but rather stores the memory of how to access memory in the Extramental Dimensions. For simplicity's sake, one can think of the brain as storing the "coordinates" of the Extramental Dimensions that correspond to memory.
The direct consequence of this is that a lobotomy can never erase a memory, because the memory is not localised in the brain. However, the “coordinates” of the Extramental Dimensions can be deleted; in this case, the memory remains intact in the Extramental Dimensions, but the brain may lose the knowledge of how to access the memory, as shown in the following illustration, taking the example of the “blue house”.
Il. 7: targeted lobotomy, post-surgery temporary effect.
Thus, in Karl Lashley's experiment, lobotomising the part of the rat's brain which is activated during the memory of the maze path to the cheese does not delete the memory of the path to the cheese, but rather erases the Extramental Dimensional coordinates to the memory; therefore, the memory of the maze path to the cheese remains intact in the Extramental Dimensions.
During the recovery phase, the brain accesses memories associated with the memory of the path to the cheese, thus recovering the lost coordinates, which will then be stored in another cerebral location. The following illustration shows how the "coordinates" of the "blue house" memory are retrieved via the memories of the gate and the tree next to the blue house, memories associated with one another in the Extramental Dimensions.
Il. 8: memory recovery after a targeted lobotomy.
If this were not the case, that is, if the path to the cheese were stored in the brain (as in the local storage model), this memory would be permanently lost with the targeted lobotomy.
In this case, the memory would not be recoverable via other memories due to the uniqueness of the area of the brain storing the memory. In fact, in the analyses preceding the lobotomy, the memory areas of all items connected to the memory to be erased would activate, causing them to also be targeted by the lobotomy, and therefore being lost along with the memory.
The hypothesis that memory is housed in Extramental Dimensions also addresses the problem that arises when one considers the insufficiency of the number of neurons and synapses necessary to store memories in the span of a lifetime. In fact, housing memory "coordinates", however complex such coordinates may be in terms of electromagnetic activations, is decidedly cheaper in terms of synaptic requirements than memorising the fundamental elements of all details of a memory and other memories connected to it.
Brain activations that are detected with technological equipment when recalling a certain memory are a kind of electromagnetic activity that generates access to the Extramental Dimensions in which the memory is stored.
The memory is then received by the brain and processed.
The brain temporarily stores only a few details of short-term memories, which it uses in various processes; all long-term memories are localised in Extramental Dimensions.
Our brain is not the hard disk; our brain is the hard disk manager.
As the space-time dimensions of the Visible Virtual Reality are shared by all living beings (the corporeal parts) of the created Virtual Reality, so too are the Extramental Dimensions shared: it is not only the memories of the individual that are housed in the Extramental Dimensions, but the memories of all living beings, and therefore also all knowledge.
Some define "Universal Knowledge" as the global sum of knowledge housed in the Extramental Dimensions [15].
Human beings are structured in such a way that in an ordinary state of consciousness, we can only access (involuntarily) the zone of Extramental Dimensions in which we store our memories. Therefore, in an ordinary state of consciousness we cannot access Extramental Dimensional areas where other individuals (or entities) store their memories and knowledge, as we do not know where they are located and how to access them.
Take for example a stranger who crosses the street and asks us to go and get a letter left at his house. Without any additional information, we cannot access to this unknown house because we do not know its location, nor do we have the keys to access it, even though his house is in the same three-dimensional virtual space shared by all. Similarly, we cannot access other people's knowledge, despite being located in the same Extramental Dimensions.
All of this is true in an ordinary state of consciousness, the ideal state for allowing us to live, experiment, and fully enjoy the experience of everyday life... but in an altered state of consciousness, things change and access to Universal Knowledge becomes possible.