On time and space in the brain: A relativistic pseudo-diffusion framework

Bridging the gap of brain and experience - Converging Neurophenomenology with Spatiotemporal Neuroscience

Neuroscience faces the challenge of connecting brain and mind, with the mind manifesting in first-person experience while the brain's neural activity can only be investigated in third-person perspective. To connect neural and mental states, Neurophenomenology provides a methodological toolkit for systematically linking first-person subjective experience with third-person objective observations of the brain's neural activity. However, beyond providing a systematic methodological strategy ('disciplined circularity'), it leaves open how neural activity and subjective experience are related among themselves, independent of our methodological strategy. The recently introduced Spatiotemporal Neuroscience suggests that neural activity and subjective experience share a commonly underlying feature as their "common currency", notably analogous spatiotemporal dynamics. Can Spatiotemporal Neuroscience inform Neurophenomenology to allow for a deeper and more substantiative connection of first-person experience and third-person neural activity? The goal of our paper is to show how Spatiotemporal Neuroscience and Neurophenomenology can be converged and integrated with each other to gain better understanding of the brain-mind connection. We describe their convergence on theoretical grounds which, subsequently, is illustrated by empirical examples like self, meditation, and depression. In conclusion, we propose that the integration of Neurophenomenology and Spatiotemporal Neuroscience can provide complementary insights, enrich both fields, allows for deeper understanding of brain-mind connection, and opens the door for developing novel methodological approaches in their empirical investigation.

The brain in Spain: The legacy of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

The legacy of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spain's first Nobel laureate neuroscientist recognized as the founding father of modern neuroscience, is to be preserved in a new museum in Madrid: the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN), one of the most important scientific research institutes in the country sciences in the scope of natural sciences of the Spanish National Research Council. For a boy who dreamed of being an artist but started his career apprenticed to first a barber and then a cobbler, Santiago Ramón y Cajal made a distinguished mark in science. One of Cajal's most important contributions to our understanding of the brain was his discovery of the direction of the information flow within neurons and in neural circuits, which he called the "dynamic polarization law," without a doubt the founding principle of neurosciences. The exposition planned by the MNCN is a perfect occasion to show the academy and, it is hoped, the general public at large the beautiful organization of the nervous system as first acknowledged by modern science. With the highly motivated organizers of this well-planned initiative, neuroscientists at the Cajal Institute are confident that this sample of the Cajal legacy will also be taken as an esthetic experience for those who approach it for the first time. It might be that science and art often go together.

From Brownian motion to virtual biopsy: a historical perspective from 40 years of diffusion MRI

Diffusion MRI was introduced in 1985, showing how the diffusive motion of molecules, especially water, could be spatially encoded with MRI to produce images revealing the underlying structure of biologic tissues at a microscopic scale. Diffusion is one of several Intravoxel Incoherent Motions (IVIM) accessible to MRI together with blood microcirculation. Diffusion imaging first revolutionized the management of acute cerebral ischemia by allowing diagnosis at an acute stage when therapies can still work, saving the outcomes of many patients. Since then, the field of diffusion imaging has expanded to the whole body, with broad applications in both clinical and research settings, providing insights into tissue integrity, structural and functional abnormalities from the hindered diffusive movement of water molecules in tissues. Diffusion imaging is particularly used to manage many neurologic disorders and in oncology for detecting and classifying cancer lesions, as well as monitoring treatment response at an early stage. The second major impact of diffusion imaging concerns the wiring of the brain (Diffusion Tensor Imaging, DTI), allowing to obtain from the anisotropic movement of water molecules in the brain white-matter images in 3 dimensions of the brain connections making up the Connectome. DTI has opened up new avenues of clinical diagnosis and research to investigate brain diseases, neurogenesis and aging, with a rapidly extending field of application in psychiatry, revealing how mental illnesses could be seen as Connectome spacetime disorders. Adding that water diffusion is closely associated to neuronal activity, as shown from diffusion fMRI, one may consider that diffusion MRI is ideally suited to investigate both brain structure and function. This article retraces the early days and milestones of diffusion MRI which spawned over 40 years, showing how diffusion MRI emerged and expanded in the research and clinical fields, up to become a pillar of modern clinical imaging.

From Black Holes Entropy to Consciousness: The Dimensions of the Brain Connectome

It has been shown that the theory of relativity can be applied physically to the functioning brain, so that the brain connectome should be considered as a four-dimensional spacetime entity curved by brain activity, just as gravity curves the four-dimensional spacetime of the physical world. Following the most recent developments in modern theoretical physics (black hole entropy, holographic principle, AdS/CFT duality), we conjecture that consciousness can naturally emerge from this four-dimensional brain connectome when a fifth dimension is considered, in the same way that gravity emerges from a 'flat' four-dimensional quantum world, without gravitation, present at the boundaries of a five-dimensional spacetime. This vision makes it possible to envisage quantitative signatures of consciousness based on the entropy of the connectome and the curvature of spacetime estimated from data obtained by fMRI in the resting state (nodal activity and functional connectivity) and constrained by the anatomical connectivity derived from diffusion tensor imaging.

How far neuroscience is from understanding brains

The cellular biology of brains is relatively well-understood, but neuroscientists have not yet generated a theory explaining how brains work. Explanations of how neurons collectively operate to produce what brains can do are tentative and incomplete. Without prior assumptions about the brain mechanisms, I attempt here to identify major obstacles to progress in neuroscientific understanding of brains and central nervous systems. Most of the obstacles to our understanding are conceptual. Neuroscience lacks concepts and models rooted in experimental results explaining how neurons interact at all scales. The cerebral cortex is thought to control awake activities, which contrasts with recent experimental results. There is ambiguity distinguishing task-related brain activities from spontaneous activities and organized intrinsic activities. Brains are regarded as driven by external and internal stimuli in contrast to their considerable autonomy. Experimental results are explained by sensory inputs, behavior, and psychological concepts. Time and space are regarded as mutually independent variables for spiking, post-synaptic events, and other measured variables, in contrast to experimental results. Dynamical systems theory and models describing evolution of variables with time as the independent variable are insufficient to account for central nervous system activities. Spatial dynamics may be a practical solution. The general hypothesis that measurements of changes in fundamental brain variables, action potentials, transmitter releases, post-synaptic transmembrane currents, etc., propagating in central nervous systems reveal how they work, carries no additional assumptions. Combinations of current techniques could reveal many aspects of spatial dynamics of spiking, post-synaptic processing, and plasticity in insects and rodents to start with. But problems defining baseline and reference conditions hinder interpretations of the results. Furthermore, the facts that pooling and averaging of data destroy their underlying dynamics imply that single-trial designs and statistics are necessary.

Mental Gravity: Depression as Spacetime Curvature of the Self, Mind, and Brain

The principle of mental gravity contends that the mind uses physical gravity as a mental model or simulacrum to express the relation between the inner self and the outer world in terms of "UP"-ness and "DOWN"-ness. The simulation of increased gravity characterises a continuum of mental gravity which states includes depression as the paradigmatic example of being down, low, heavy, and slow. The physics of gravity can also be used to model spacetime curvature in depression, particularly gravitational time dilation as a property of MG analogous to subjective time dilation (i.e., the slowing of temporal flow in conscious experience). The principle has profound implications for the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness (TTC) with regard to temporo-spatial alignment that establishes a "world-brain relation" that is centred on embodiment and the socialisation of conscious states. The principle of mental gravity provides the TTC with a way to incorporate the structure of the world into the structure of the brain, conscious experience, and thought. In concert with other theories of cognitive and neurobiological spacetime, the TTC can also work towards the "common currency" approach that also potentially connects the TTC to predictive processing frameworks such as free energy, neuronal gauge theories, and active inference accounts of depression. It gives the up/down dimension of space, as defined by the gravitational field, a unique status that is connected to both our embodied interaction with the physical world, and also the inverse, reflective, emotional but still embodied experience of ourselves.

Emergence of Gloomy Eyelet inside DNA

The purpose of this article is to study gloomy eyelet (GE) inside the cell nucleus by using models of warp drive hydro (WDH), swinging spring, Rankine, co-moving reference frame, and Poincare. The beat wave frequency (ω) of blood pressure on the vessel and the swinging spring frequency (Ω) of DNA coincide together on the Rankine model. In this case, it leads to appearing as a sudden pressure drop and an accelerated cavity in the medium of the warp drive hydro (WDH) model. In transient conditions, the vortex flow inside WDH can generate gloomy eyelet (GE), and the tiny distortion of nano space–time revealed inside the gloomy eyelet (GE) inside DNA and the tiny distortion of nano space–time revealed inside the co-moving reference frame (CMRF) model of the gloomy eyelet (GE). The space–time distortion can act as a hidden potential for the cell nucleus and some behaviors of gloomy eyelet can be traced by the frequency responses of human body organs. The interactions between two adjacent different mediums such as the normal cells and abnormal cells, earth’s gravitational effects can lead to changes in the distortion of space–time inside the cell nucleus. Transient bonds between particles can be expected to appear in the gloomy eyelet inside DNA. Identifying the range of changes in the frequency responses and the transient bonds inside the cell nucleus can be introduced as one of the health indicators.

Fundamental Cause of Bio-Chirality: Space-Time Symmetry—Concept Review

The search for fundamental determinants of bio-molecular chirality is a hot topic in biology, clarifying the meaning of evolution and the enigma of life’s origin. The question of origin may be resolved assuming that non-biological and biological entities obey nature’s universal laws grounded on space-time symmetry (STS) and space-time relativity (SPR). The fabric of STS is our review’s primary subject. This symmetry, encompassing the behavior of elementary particles and galaxy structure, imposes its fundamental laws on all hierarchical levels of the biological world. From the perspective of STS, objects across spatial scales may be classified as chiral or achiral concerning a specific space-related symmetry transformation: mirror reflection. The chiral object is not identical (i.e., not superimposable) to its mirror image. In geometry, distinguish two kinds of chiral objects. The first one does not have any reflective symmetry elements (a point or plane of symmetry) but may have rotational symmetry axes (dissymmetry). The second one does not have any symmetry elements (asymmetry). As the form symmetry deficiency, Chirality is the critical structural feature of natural systems, including sub-atomic particles and living matter. According to the Standard Model (SM) theory and String Theory (StrT), elementary particles associated with the four fundamental forces of nature determine the existence of micro- and galaxy scales of nature. Therefore, the inheritance of molecular symmetry from the symmetry of elementary particles indicates a bi-directional (internal [(micro-scale) and external (galaxy sale)] causal pathway of prevalent bio-chirality. We assume that the laws of the physical world impact the biological matter’s appearance through both extremities of spatial dimensions. The extended network of multi-disciplinary experimental evidence supports this hypothesis. However, many experimental results are derived and interpreted based on the narrow-view prerogative and highly specific terminology. The current review promotes a holistic approach to experimental results in two fast-developing, seemingly unrelated, divergent branches of STS and biological chirality. The generalized view on the origin of prevalent bio-molecular chirality is necessary for understanding the link between a diverse range of biological events. The chain of chirality transfer links ribosomal protein synthesis, cell morphology, and neuronal signaling with the laterality of cognitive functions.