Is the soul real? A Neurosurgeon explores the evidence

Thomas said:

This is a fascinating presentation by Dr Michael Egnor – I don't fully embrace everything he says, but his presentation of the data certainly made me challenge certain assumptions.
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Excepts from the book (but all in parentheses is my comment to provide context), The Field, by Lynne McTaggart, might reinforce the conclusions of Dr Michael Egnor:
page 81-95: The problem was that the old notions about electrical ‘image’ formation in the brain—the supposed correspondence between images in the world and the brain’s electrical firing—had been disproved by Pibram, and his own monkey studies made him extremely dubious about the latest, most popular theory of perception—that we know the world through line detectors. …Hilgard kept pressing him (for a theory explaining the apparently highly distributed processing of the cortex). Pibram hadn’t a clue as to what kind of theory he would give his friend… Then one of his colleagues chanced across an article in Scientific American by Sir John Eccles…who postulated that imagination might have something to do with microwaves in the brain. Just a week later, another article appeared, written by Emmet Leith, an engineer …about laser beams and optical holography, a new technology.

It had been right there, all along, right in front of his nose. This was the metaphor he’d been looking for. The concept of wave fronts and holography seemed to hold the answer to questions he’d been posing for 20 years. Lashley himself had formulated a theory of wave interference patterns in the brain, but abandoned it because he couldn’t envision how they could be generated in the cortex. Eccles’ ideas appeared to solve that problem. Pibram now thought that the brain must somehow ‘read’ information by transforming ordinary images into wave interference patterns, and then transform them again into virtual images, just as a laser hologram is able to do. The other mystery solved by the holographic metaphor would be memory ( referring back to Lashley’s rats who each had almost all of their brains fried and yet they still remembered how to go through a maze). Rather than precisely located anywhere, memory would be distributed everywhere, so that each part contained the whole. …
When we observe the world, Pibram theorized, we do so on a much deeper level than the sticks-and-stones world ‘out there.’ Our brain primarily talks to itself and to the rest of the body not with words or images, or even bits of chemical impulses, but in the language of wave interference; the language of phase, amplitude and frequency—the ‘spectral domain.’ We perceive an object by ‘resonating’ with it, getting ‘in synch’ with it.
…Walter (Schempp) also correspond with Pibram, trading information. What they all (including Peter Mercer, Edgar Mitchell) discovered was something that Pibram’s work had always hinted at: perception occurred at a much more fundamental level of matter—the netherworld of the quantum particle. We didn’t see objects per se, but only their quantum information and out of that constructed our image the world. Perceiving the world was a matter of tuning into the Zero Point Field. …
Although each of the scientists—Puthoff, Popp, Beneveniste and Pibram—had been working independently, Edgar Mitchell was one of the few to realize that, as a totality, their work presented itself as a unified theory of mind and matter—evidence of physicist David Bohm’s vision of a world of ‘unbroken wholeness’. The universe was a vast dynamic cobweb of energy exchange, with a basic substructure containing all possible versions of all possible forms of matter. Nature was not blind and mechanistic, but open-ended, intelligent and purposeful, making use of a cohesive learning feedback process of information being fed back and forth between organisms and their environment.
 
wil said:
1. Framing and Reframing:
Reframing "Materialism": He consistently reframes the mainstream scientific view of the mind as purely a product of the brain as "materialism" or "physicalism," often presenting it as a limited or insufficient explanation. This sets up his own view as a more complete or intellectually satisfying alternative.
Highlighting "Anomalies": He frequently presents medical cases (e.g., patients with significant brain damage who retain high cognitive function, split-brain patients) as "anomalies" that challenge the materialist paradigm. This creates a sense of paradox that his non-materialist explanation can resolve.
Defining Terms: He often takes time to define key terms like "soul" (often drawing from Thomistic philosophy) in a way that aligns with his argument, distinguishing it from popular, often "ghostly," misconceptions.
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Wil, If and/or when you can find the time to read the excerpts (mainly about Pibram’s research and theory) from Lynne McTaggart’s book, The Field, which seems to go into more detail and cover more (or at least DIFFERENT) ground than the You Tube presentation shared, I’d like to get your feedback as to whether the evidence is any more robust in relation to the similar anti materialistic/mechanistic bias (that McTaggart obviously holds. Before? or after? her literature research?).
 
otherbrother said:
Excepts from the book (but all in parentheses is my comment to provide context), The Field, by Lynne McTaggart, might reinforce the conclusions of Dr Michael Egnor:
page 81-95: The problem was that the old notions about electrical ‘image’ formation in the brain—the supposed correspondence between images in the world and the brain’s electrical firing—had been disproved by Pibram, and his own monkey studies made him extremely dubious about the latest, most popular theory of perception—that we know the world through line detectors. …Hilgard kept pressing him (for a theory explaining the apparently highly distributed processing of the cortex). Pibram hadn’t a clue as to what kind of theory he would give his friend… Then one of his colleagues chanced across an article in Scientific American by Sir John Eccles…who postulated that imagination might have something to do with microwaves in the brain. Just a week later, another article appeared, written by Emmet Leith, an engineer …about laser beams and optical holography, a new technology.

It had been right there, all along, right in front of his nose. This was the metaphor he’d been looking for. The concept of wave fronts and holography seemed to hold the answer to questions he’d been posing for 20 years. Lashley himself had formulated a theory of wave interference patterns in the brain, but abandoned it because he couldn’t envision how they could be generated in the cortex. Eccles’ ideas appeared to solve that problem. Pibram now thought that the brain must somehow ‘read’ information by transforming ordinary images into wave interference patterns, and then transform them again into virtual images, just as a laser hologram is able to do. The other mystery solved by the holographic metaphor would be memory ( referring back to Lashley’s rats who each had almost all of their brains fried and yet they still remembered how to go through a maze). Rather than precisely located anywhere, memory would be distributed everywhere, so that each part contained the whole. …
When we observe the world, Pibram theorized, we do so on a much deeper level than the sticks-and-stones world ‘out there.’ Our brain primarily talks to itself and to the rest of the body not with words or images, or even bits of chemical impulses, but in the language of wave interference; the language of phase, amplitude and frequency—the ‘spectral domain.’ We perceive an object by ‘resonating’ with it, getting ‘in synch’ with it.
…Walter (Schempp) also correspond with Pibram, trading information. What they all (including Peter Mercer, Edgar Mitchell) discovered was something that Pibram’s work had always hinted at: perception occurred at a much more fundamental level of matter—the netherworld of the quantum particle. We didn’t see objects per se, but only their quantum information and out of that constructed our image the world. Perceiving the world was a matter of tuning into the Zero Point Field. …
Although each of the scientists—Puthoff, Popp, Beneveniste and Pibram—had been working independently, Edgar Mitchell was one of the few to realize that, as a totality, their work presented itself as a unified theory of mind and matter—evidence of physicist David Bohm’s vision of a world of ‘unbroken wholeness’. The universe was a vast dynamic cobweb of energy exchange, with a basic substructure containing all possible versions of all possible forms of matter. Nature was not blind and mechanistic, but open-ended, intelligent and purposeful, making use of a cohesive learning feedback process of information being fed back and forth between organisms and their environment.
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Add this except (page 88 of The Field):
Pineal conjectured that these wave collisions must create the pictorial images in our brain. When we perceive something, it’s not due to the activity of the neurons themselves but to certain patches of dendrites distributed around the brain, which, LIKE A RADIO STATION (my capital letters), are set to resonate only at certain frequencies. It is like having a vast number of piano strings all over your head, only some of which would vibrate as a particular note is played.
 
otherbrother said:
Add this except (page 88 of The Field):
Pineal conjectured that these wave collisions must create the pictorial images in our brain. When we perceive something, it’s not due to the activity of the neurons themselves but to certain patches of dendrites distributed around the brain, which, LIKE A RADIO STATION (my capital letters), are set to resonate only at certain frequencies. It is like having a vast number of piano strings all over your head, only some of which would vibrate as a particular note is played.
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And this (page 86) : … Pietsch (Paul, biologist) discovered that he could remove the brain of a salamander and although the animal became comatose, it would resume functioning once the brain was put back in. If Pibram were right, then some of the salamander’s brain could be removed, reshuffled, and it shouldn’t affect its ordinary function. But Pietach was certain that Pibram was wrong and he was fierce in his determination to prove it so. In more than 700 experiments, Pietsch cut out scores of salamander brains. Before putting them back in, he began tampering with them. In successive experiments he reversed, cut out, sliced away, shuffled and even sausage-ground his test subjects brains. But no matter how brutally mangled, or diminished in size, whenever whatever was left of the brains were returned to his subjects and the salamanders had recovered, they returned to normal behavior. From being a complete skeptic, Pietsch turned convert to Pibram’s view that memory is distributed throughout the brain.
 
otherbrother said:
And this (page 86) : … Pietsch (Paul, biologist) discovered that he could remove the brain of a salamander and although the animal became comatose, it would resume functioning once the brain was put back in. If Pibram were right, then some of the salamander’s brain could be removed, reshuffled, and it shouldn’t affect its ordinary function. But Pietach was certain that Pibram was wrong and he was fierce in his determination to prove it so. In more than 700 experiments, Pietsch cut out scores of salamander brains. Before putting them back in, he began tampering with them. In successive experiments he reversed, cut out, sliced away, shuffled and even sausage-ground his test subjects brains. But no matter how brutally mangled, or diminished in size, whenever whatever was left of the brains were returned to his subjects and the salamanders had recovered, they returned to normal behavior. From being a complete skeptic, Pietsch turned convert to Pibram’s view that memory is distributed throughout the brain.
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I couldn’t find the part in the book where I recall that McTaggart reports that Pibram concluded that memory is stored OUTSIDE of the brain! I’ll keep looking.
I stumbled though upon a section that claims there is scientific evidence of human minds affecting randomized computers to become biased, NOT random. If these findings are accurate, it suggests a mind/electronic interaction of some sort. When my close friend, Mark, died and we were playing a tribute song I had written for him (based on a tune he and I came up with while in a jam session) others told me that the lights in the room flickered. I did not observe it, but later experienced some other evidence that his goal (before dying) to contact me from the other side had been reached/accomplished. One of the evidences was my feeling him jump on the bed I was lying on—right through my body! I wrote down other evidences in a self published book. I’ll have to re-read those sections to see whether or not the interpretations of “evidence” were stretched too much by my willingness to believe in his ability to contact me from the other side.
 
Nicholas Weeks said:
"We took the child to an autism specialist, but he said it was too soon to
be sure. We would have to wait before we could know more. But at nearly
six months of age, he was still not responding to us. I found it harder each
day to go about my daily tasks because I thought about him all the time.
One night, it all came to a head.
I was called to see a patient at a Catholic hospital in another town. As I
was leaving the hospital, I passed the chapel. I thought, “I don’t believe in
God, but I’ll do anything now. I just want my son to know me.”
I went into the chapel and knelt before the altar. “God,” I said, “I don’t
know if you exist, but I need help. I am terrified that my son is autistic. It’s
agony to have a child who will never know or love me.”
Then I heard a voice—it was the only time in my life I’d ever heard a
voice in my head that was not mine—and the voice said, But that’s what
you’re doing to Me.
I collapsed in front of the altar. The voice I heard had only spoken seven
words, but I felt like He knew me intimately and had been watching me
with love and wisdom all my life and that He knew me better than I knew
myself. It was like a curtain was lifted, and the Source of my life was
speaking to me directly. My heart burned in me.
When I recovered, I prayed, “Lord, I will stop doing it to You. I’m sorry.
I won’t be autistic to You any longer. Please heal my son, and please heal
me.” I walked out of the chapel a shaken man, and a different man.
The next morning, I called my local Catholic church (my epiphany had
happened in a Catholic chapel, and I sensed that this is where He wanted to
meet me) and asked to be baptized."

From Introduction
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Read well
 
powessy said:
This means that we are not the cells that make us but a soul, once this happens then you can become yourself again and again but you cannot become yourself (first). This is the reason for the minds they allow us to become ourselves first and not just inside of ourselves.
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Your belief based on thin veil experiences matches the presentation except for the minds. Are they like directors of souls? More like soulless spirits? Interesting.
 
otherbrother said:
Wil, If and/or when you can find the time to read the excerpts (mainly about Pibram’s research and theory) from Lynne McTaggart’s book, The Field,
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If ya kicked a soccer ball in a conference of New thought authors, teachers, or preachers you'd have small odds hitting many who hadn't read, written about or discussed the field. I believe most believers like to believe science that supports.their belief.
otherbrother said:
Wil, If and/or when you can find the time to read the excerpts (mainly about Pibram’s research and theory) from Lynne McTaggart’s book, The Field
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Popular.
Broken new thought as I think all believers enjoy when science supports stir.Believe for they believe it supports their belief

And thanks for the rabbit hole
Voices of Our Time Lecture Series: Dr. Karl H. Pribram - September 30, 1991
Meeting of the Minds: Interview with Karl Pribram
DECODING Memory and Consciousness: Karl Pribram’s Holographic Brain Theory
Your Brain is a Hologram: The Revolutionary Theory of Karl Pribram
Unveiling The Holographic Universe: Karl Pribram's Revolutionary Vision
 
Sounds like it’s very familiar territory for you. Do es the terrain get you partway or all the way where a modern mind longing for spirituality wants/needs to go? I certainly gravitate toward Nee Thought thoughts. An old Christian author by last name of Clark wrote a book called Man’s Teach for God that I really like a lot, because he conceptualized dimensions of reality. Like me, he wonders how humans can send signals through the air and pick up sounds and images far away, and not think of something like angels flying about. Yet we take such scientific findings for granted. I also like Carl Sagan’s belief that science and spirituality )if not religion) converge as we mentally/conceptually evolve.
 
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otherbrother said:
Sounds like it’s very familiar territory for you. Do es the terrain get you partway or all the way where a modern mind longing for spirituality wants/needs to go? I certainly gravitate toward Nee Thought thoughts. An old Christian author by last name of Clark wrote a book called Man’s Teach for God that I really like a lot, because he conceptualized dimensions of reality. Like me, he wonders how humans can send signals through the air and pick up sounds and images far away, and not think of something like angels flying about. Yet we take such scientific findings for granted. I also like Carl Sagan’s belief that science and spirituality )if not religion) converge as we mentally/conceptually evolve.
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I Misspoke on the name of Clark’s book that I read and liked. “Teach” was a typo. Supposed to be Reach, and the book I read I think was God’s Reach for Man, but he also wrote Man’s Reach for God, which I didn’t read.
 
TheLightWithin said:
That sounds so intriguing. I tried to look it up but couldn't find it? Man's Teach for God didn't come up with or without the last name Clark.

EDIT: Could this be the one you are referring to? https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Reach-Analysis-Spiritual-Growth/dp/1684225809
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Yes, That’s the one I read. Fascinating use of concept of different dimensions, from two dimensional consciousness of animals, all the way up to a seven dimensional consciousness. Awareness of interactive energy flows and fields is a step up from regular view of a three dimensional reality. But he goes on to posit three more dimensions of viewing reality, each proposed “dimension” adding greater complexity as though a developmental stage. His multiple dimensions are probably more of a useful metaphor, but nonetheless seem to ring true to me. Similar to developing greater fractal complexity, more facets to conceived “reality.” He claimed he was not in the New Thought camp, but others categorized him as part of New Thought—best I can recall.
 
wil said:
Broken new thought as I think all believers enjoy when science supports stir.Believe for they believe it supports their belief
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True. We don’t do well with the null hypothesis. We do tend to use reasoning to support what we want to believe. As a psychological defense mechanism, it’s called rationalization.
 
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