New research shows that specific electric field oscillations determine the speed of perception
Our consciousness feels continuous, a “stream of consciousness,” to use William James’ famous phrase. But is it really continuous? New research is making it clear that we actually experience the world in snapshots, in “quanta” of conscious moments.
Herzog et al. state in a 2016 paper on “time slices”: “perception seems to operate in a discrete manner, just like movies appear continuous although they consist of discrete images.”
Could it really be the case that our perception and even our consciousness more generally is actually like a movie in terms of being a series of frames?
Rufin Vanrullen, a French researcher who has been fleshing out the science of cyclic perception, states in a 2016 review of the science in this area that cyclic perception “does not necessarily entail that events occurring in-between two epochs are lost to perception, but rather that events that are processed too late for one snapshot should be deferred until the next.” He explains that “two events occurring in rapid succession at one phase of the critical rhythm may fall into a single snapshot, and hence be experienced together, while at the opposite phase the same two events could be split into successive snapshots, and experienced sequentially.”
Does such cyclic perception correlate with the brain’s electrical rhythms? According to Vanrullen and many other researchers they do. Visual perception correlates to the 11 cycles per second (11 Hz) mid-range alpha rhythms that are one of the more commonly observed brain rhythms during electroencephalography (EEG), the most widely used method for measuring brain activity. Vanrullen also notes a 7 Hz high-range theta rhythm, another common frequency band, that accompanies attention to perceptual data (Vanrullen, R. 2016 “Perceptual cycles”).
This suggests, without proving, that our perceptual cycles are connected in important ways to our brain’s electromagnetic rhythms and to consciousness itself.
Vanrullen concludes:
In short, brain rhythms produce perceptual cycles. This unavoidable consequence of the very existence of brain rhythms, which can be coined rhythmic perception (or, equivalently, cyclic or periodic perception), has long been disregarded; but a flurry of recent findings … leave little doubt that many aspects of human perception and cognition do fluctuate rhythmically.
Morillon and coauthors look at the role of delta and beta bands in speech and auditory perception, concluding that “motor acts and associated oscillatory dynamics temporally structure the activity of sensory cortices, and, as a consequence, the processing of incoming sensory inputs.” (Morillon et al. 2019 “Prominence of delta oscillatory rhythms in the motor cortex and their relevance for auditory and speech perception”).
Quanta of perception, quanta of consciousness
Vanrullen explains that, ultimately, “the distinction between rhythmic and discrete perception is essentially a matter of degree, and all perceptual periodicities are in fact germane to the question of discrete perception.” And “a frequency change of the critical brain rhythm is equivalent to a change in the ‘frame rate’ of discrete perception (to employ again the video clip metaphor).”
This last comment is the key conclusion from the research Vanrullen and others have conducted. And it’s potentially quite remarkable when we think through its implications. It means that perception and consciousness itself come in discrete chunks, rhythmically. This what I mean by “quanta of perception” and “quanta of consciousness.”
Implications for the General Resonance Theory of consciousness
This research is good support for the General Resonance Theory of consciousness because this theory, developed by me and Jonathan Schooler, is based on the idea that shared resonance frequencies lead to the combination of consciousness. The idea of shared resonance applies to both perception (measured by the “Perception Index” in our theory) and the integration of consciousness (measured by the “Connectivity Index” in our theory).
The product of all perception data and its integration gives us the capacity for consciousness in each moment, designated Omega in our theory (equivalent to Phi in Integrated Information Theory). Omega is calculated as a snapshot in time. So in GRT consciousness itself is fundamentally quantized.
Omega is a measure of the capacity for consciousness in each moment. As the speed of consciousness quanta increases our subjective experience over time, over a series of snapshots, becomes more rich. If the flow of quanta slows down, in altered states, or comes to a stop, essentially, like in coma or other vegetative states, our subjective experience is far less rich. When we die it disappears since there are no more quanta of consciousness being produced.
Let’s end with some reflections on William James’ intuitive notion of the stream of consciousness. There is no contradiction between the idea of snapshots or quanta of consciousness and the stream of consciousness. These ideas are readily reconciled when we realize that any stream will ultimately consist of droplets and molecules of water, when we peer downward to the very small scale.
Similarly, the fact that perception and consciousness seems to be quantized at the very small scale suggests that the experienced stream of consciousness is made up of these smallest units. But when they’re experienced in real-time the nature of our minds and brains renders that experience a continuous stream.
Interestingly, and one of the strengths of GRT, is that this process of quantization of human consciousness does not stop at the human scale. Rather, it’s a multi-scale process of nested resonances from the very smallest scale of reality to the largest. Physics at the smallest scale is governed by quantum mechanics, so GRT’s conceptual structure mirrors that of quantum physics in key ways. This mirroring is not accidental.
GRT is inspired in large part by Alfred North Whitehead’s “process philosophy,” which was developed concurrently with quantum mechanics — during the 1920s and 30s. As such, it was the first and perhaps still most serious effort at creating a systematic philosophy and ontology based, in part, on the insights of quantum mechanics and other insights from modern physics (Whitehead was an active theorist in many foundational physics and mathematical problems during his life).
GRT, as a general theory of consciousness, allows for the integration of different types of theories into a unified whole that can explain the nature of physical reality and consciousness, using many of the same concepts.
Later essays will explore this unified theory approach further.
