Scaling in the brain

Abstract

Proper scaling is an important concept in physics. It allows theoretical frameworks originally developed to address a specific question to be generalized or recycled to solve another problem at a different scale. The rescaling of the theory of heat to link diffusion and Brownian motion is a famous example set out by Einstein. We have recently shown how the special and general relativity theories could be scaled down to the action potential propagation speed in the brain to explain some of its functioning: Functional “distances” between neural nodes (geodesics), depend on both the spatial distances between nodes and the time to propagate between them, through a connectome spacetime with four intricated dimensions. This spacetime may further be curved by neural activity suggesting how conscious activity could act in a similar the gravitational field curved the physical spacetime. Indeed, the apparent gap between the microscopic and macroscopic connectome scales may find an echo in the AdS/CFT correspondence. Applied to the brain connectome, this means that consciousness may appear as the emergence in a 5D spacetime of the neural activity present as its boundaries, the 4D cortical spacetime, as a holographic 5D construction by our inner brain. We explore here how the conflict between ‘consciousness and matter’ could be resolved by considering that the spacetime of our cerebral connectome has five dimensions, the fifth dimension allowing the natural, immaterial emergence of consciousness as a dual form of the 4D spacetime embedded in our material cerebral cortex. Statement Of SignificanceScaling to the brain the AdS/CFT framework which shows how the General Gravity framework, hence gravitation, naturally (mathematically) emerges from a “flat”, gravitationless Quantum 4D spacetime once a fifth dimension is considered, we conjecture that the conflict between ‘consciousness and matter’ might be ill-posed and could be resolved by considering that the spacetime of our cerebral connectome has five dimensions, the fifth dimension allowing the natural, immaterial (mind, private) emergence of consciousness as a dual form of the 4D spacetime activity embedded in our material (body, public) cerebral cortex.