Eric Halgren

The cerebral cortex integrates processed sensory information from all modalities, current and recent events, strategies, constraints, values, and objectives, to arrive at a coherent mental experience including intentional actions. This integration is central to the physical manifestation of the conscious mind, but currently proposed neurophysiological mechanisms are highly speculative, functionally inadequate, and/or logically flawed. Using extensive micro- and macro-array recordings of local field potentials and large numbers of single units in thinking humans we recently discovered a possible mechanism for the synchronous integration of association cortex (and related limbic areas) across all lobes and both hemispheres: a network of zero-lag phase-locked ~100ms long ~90Hz oscillations connected as coupled oscillators. Such ‘co-ripples’ appear to facilitate and organize the co-firing of neurons in distant cortical and limbic locations during cognitive tasks and spontaneous mentation. Unlike the currently dominant proposed mechanisms of cortical integration, co-ripple enabled integration is: emergent not directed, synchronous not sequential, distributed not focal, consensual not deductive, and democratic not hierarchical. Furthermore, this mechanism is deeply consistent with known neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. I acknowledge the deep collaboration of Charles Dickey, Jacob Garrett, Ilya Verzhbinsky, and Sierra Wilson in this research.