Nirosha Murugan

Consciousness has historically been tethered to neural correlates that position its biological basis within cellular circuits, pathways, and large-scale networks. These approaches have been empirically powerful, revealing reliable associations between neural activity and conscious states, yet they remain largely descriptive and alone do not establish the mechanisms underlying subjective experience. Increasing evidence from in microtubule dynamics, bioenergetics, and mesoscale signaling architecture motivates efforts to move beyond neural circuits and their molecular underpinnings and reinforce that greater molecular and cellular resolution does not, by itself, explain how those processes give rise to subjective experience. Developing better accounts of the physical processes underlying consciousness requires examining how energy is transferred, transformed, and organized in time and space to support information processing across modalities and scales. This requires characterizing the brain and body’s intrinsic optical and bioenergetic dynamics alongside their electrical activity and determining how external physical stimulation alters their relationships. We present findings on ultraweak photon emissions associated with brain activity, including temporal and entropic features that covary with electrophysiological measures. These findings reveal measurable structure in endogenous optical activity and motivate investigation of its potential contribution to neural communication. We then examine how patterned magnetic fields and pulsed light influence mitochondrial function, cytoskeletal dynamics, and neural activity, linking the temporal structure of external inputs to changes in endogenous dynamics. Measuring signals generated by living tissue and testing its responses to patterned stimulation provide a means to investigate how energy transformations participate in biological computation and resulting conscious states. Together, these observations inform an energy-based functional model of consciousness and motivate experimental strategies to probe how time-varying biophysical information contributes to integrating bodily and environmental signals in conscious experience.

Dr. Nirosha J. Murugan is an applied biophysicist, Tier II Canada Research Chair in Tissue Biophysics, and Distinguished Research Chair and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research approaches the body and mind not solely as a molecular system, but as a dynamic network shaped by fundamental principles of physics. Her laboratory investigates how energy, in the form of patterned physical signals such as light, electricity, and magnetism, is sensed, transformed, and communicated across scales, from cells to the whole body. Combining optical and quantum sensing, electromagnetic stimulation, and bioengineering tools, her team examines how these patterned signals influence energy flow and metabolism, cellular plasticity, tissue regeneration, and brain function.

Dr. Murugan and her team's mission is to connect fundamental discovery to technologies designed to improve human health. Her Ph.D. research in Biomolecular Sciences established optical biomarkers for distinguishing cancerous from noncancerous tissues in experimental models, laying the foundation for a biotech startup pursuing ultra-early, non-invasive cancer detection. As a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Michael Levin and David Kaplan at Tufts University, she co-invented a patented silk hydrogel delivery system that promoted limb regeneration in normally non-regenerative adult frogs. She has authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications, including work in Nature Reviews Bioengineering, Science Advances, and Cell Metabolism. Her discoveries have reached broader audiences through coverage in The New York Times, Scientific American, amongst others, supporting her commitment to making emerging science accessible. Dr. Murugan’s experience developing new principles and technologies to read the body’s state and reprogram it toward restoring health has led her to advise at the national level in Canada (NSERC) and the United States (NIH) on applying quantum science to health.

To learn more about her research and ongoing lab work, visit themuruganlab.com.