The Holographic Universe (4 page)

PHOTOGRAPHIC
MEMORY

In 1972, Harvard vision
researchers Daniel Pollen and Michael Tractenberg proposed that the holographic
brain theory may explain why some people possess photographic memories (also
known as
eidetic memories).
Typically, individuals with photographic
memories will spend a few moments scanning the scene they wish to memorize.
When they want to see the scene again, they “project” a mental image of it,
either with their eyes closed or as they gaze at a blank wall or screen. In a
study of one such individual, a Harvard art history professor named Elizabeth,
Pollen and Tractenberg found that the mental images she projected were so real
to her that when she read an image of a page from Goethe's
Faust
her
eyes moved as if she were reading a real page.

Noting that the image
stored in a fragment of holographic film gets hazier as the fragment gets
smaller, Pollen and Tractenberg suggest that perhaps such individuals have more
vivid memories because they somehow have access to very large regions of their
memory holograms. Conversely, perhaps most of us have memories that are much
less vivid because our access is limited to smaller regions of the memory
holograms.

THE TRANSFERENCE
OF LEARNED SKILLS

Pribram believes the
holographic model also sheds light on our ability to transfer learned skills
from one part of our body to another. As you sit reading this book, take a
moment and trace your first name in the air with your left elbow. You will
probably discover that this is a relatively easy thing to do, and yet in all
likelihood it is something you have never done before. It may not seem a
surprising ability to you, but in the classic view that various areas of the
brain (such as the area controlling the movements of the elbow) are
“hard-wired,” or able to perform tasks
only
after repetitive learning
has caused the proper neural connections to become established between brain
cells, this is something of a puzzle. Pribram points out that the problem
becomes much more tractable if the brain were to convert all of its memories,
including memories of learned abilities such as writing, into a language of
interfering wave forms. Such a brain would be much more flexible and could
shift its stored information around with the same ease that a skilled pianist
transposes a song from one musical key to another.

This same flexibility
may explain how we are able to recognize a familiar face regardless of the
angle from which we are viewing it Again, once the brain has memorized a face
(or any other object or scene) and converted it into a language of wave forms,
it can, in a sense, tumble this internal hologram around and examine it from
any perspective it wants.

PHANTOM LIMB
SENSATIONS AND HOW WE CONSTRUCT A “WORLD-OUT-THERE”

To most of us it is
obvious that our feelings of love, hunger, anger, and so on, are internal
realities, and the sound of an orchestra playing, the heat of the sun, the
smell of bread baking, and so on, are external realities. But it is not so
clear how our brains enable us to distinguish between the two. For example,
Pribram points out that when we look at a person, the image of the person is
really on the surface of our retinas. Yet we do not perceive the person as
being on our retinas. We perceive them as being in the “world-out-there.”
Similarly, when we stub our toe we experience the pain in our toe. But the pain
is not really in our toe. It is actually a neurophysiological process taking
place somewhere in our brain. How then is our brain able to take the multitude
of neurophysiological processes that manifest as our experience, all of which
are internal, and fool us into thinking that some are internal and some are
located beyond the confines of our gray matter?

Creating the illusion
that things are located where they are not is the quintessential feature of a
hologram. As mentioned, if you look at a hologram it seems to have extension in
space, but if you pass your hand through it you will discover there is nothing
there. Despite what your senses tell you, no instrument will pick up the
presence of any abnormal energy or substance where the hologram appears to be
hovering. This is because a hologram is a
virtual
image, an image that
appears to be where it is not, and possesses no more extension in space than
does the three-dimensional image you see of yourself when you look in a mirror.
Just as the image in the mirror is located in the silvering on the mirror's
back surface, the actual location of a hologram is always in the photographic
emulsion on the surface of the film recording it.

Further evidence that
the brain is able to Tool us into thinking that inner processes are located
outside the body comes from the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Georg von
Bekesy. In a series of experiments conducted in the late 1960s Bekesy placed
vibrators on the knees of blindfolded test subjects. Then he varied the rates
at which the instruments vibrated. By doing so he discovered that he could make
his test subjects experience the sensation that a point source of vibration was
jumping from one knee to the other. He found that he could even make his
subjects feel the point source of vibration in the space
between
their
knees. In short, he demonstrated that humans have the ability to seemingly
experience sensation in spatial locations where they have absolutely no sense
receptors.

Pribram believes that
Bekesy's work is compatible with the holographic view and sheds additional
light on how interfering wave fronts—or in Bekesy's case, interfering sources
of physical vibration—enable the brain to localize some of its experiences
beyond the physical boundaries of the body. He feels this process might also
explain the phantom limb phenomenon, or the sensation experienced by some
amputees that a missing arm or leg is still present. Such individuals often
feel eerily realistic cramps, pains, and tinglings in these phantom appendages,
but maybe what they are experiencing is the holographic memory of the limb that
is still recorded in the interference patterns in their brains.

Experimental
Support for the Holographic Brain

For Pribram the many
similarities between brains and holograms were tantalizing, but he knew his
theory didn't mean anything unless it was backed up by more solid evidence. One
researcher who provided such evidence was Indiana University biologist Paul
Pietsch. Intriguingly, Pietsch began as an ardent disbeliever in Pribram's
theory. He was especially skeptical of Pribram's claim that memories do not
possess any specific location in the brain.

To prove Pribram wrong,
Pietsch devised a series of experiments, and as the test subjects of his
experiments he chose salamanders. In previous studies he had discovered that he
could remove the brain of a salamander without killing it, and although it
remained in a stupor as long as its brain was missing, its behavior completely
returned to normal as soon as its brain was restored.

Pietsch reasoned that if
a salamander's feeding behavior is not confined to any specific location in the
brain, then it should not matter how its brain is positioned in its head. If it
did matter, Pribram's theory would be disproven. He then flip-flopped the left
and right hemispheres of a salamander's brain, but to his dismay, as soon as it
recovered, the salamander quickly resumed normal feeding.

He took another
salamander and turned its brain upside down. When it recovered it, too, fed
normally. Growing increasingly frustrated, he decided to resort to more drastic
measures. In a series of over 700 operations he sliced, flipped, shuffled,
subtracted, and even minced the brains of his hapless subjects, but always when
he replaced what was left of their brains, their behavior returned to normal.

These findings and
others turned Pietsch into a believer and attracted enough attention that his
research became the subject of a segment on the television show
60 Minutes.
He writes about this experience as well as giving detailed accounts of his
experiments in his insightful book
Shufflebrain.

The Mathematical
Language of the Hologram

While the theories that
enabled the development of the hologram were first formulated in 1947 by Dennis
Gabor (who later won a Nobel Prize for his efforts), in the late 1960s and
early 1970s Pribram's theory received even more persuasive experimental
support. When Gabor first conceived the idea of holography he wasn't thinking
about lasers. His goal was to improve the electron microscope, then a primitive
and imperfect device. His approach was a mathematical one, and the mathematics
he used was a type of calculus invented by an eighteenth-century Frenchman
named Jean B. J. Fourier.

Roughly speaking what
Fourier developed was a mathematical way of converting any pattern, no matter
how complex, into a language of simple waves. He also showed how these wave
forms could be converted back into the original pattern. In other words, just
as a television camera converts an image into electromagnetic frequencies and a
television set converts those frequencies back into the original image, Fourier
showed how a similar process could be achieved mathematically. The equations he
developed to convert images into wave forms and back again are known as
Fourier
transforms.

Fourier transforms
enabled Gabor to convert a picture of an object into the blur of interference
patterns on a piece of holographic film. They also enabled him to devise a way
of converting those interference patterns back into an image of the original
object. In fact the special whole in every part of a hologram is one of the by-products
that occurs when an image or pattern is translated into the Fourier language of
wave forms.

Throughout the late
1960s and early 1970s various researchers contacted Pribram and told him they
had uncovered evidence that the visual system worked as a kind of frequency
analyzer. Since frequency is a measure of the number of oscillations a wave
undergoes per second, this strongly suggested that the brain might be
functioning as a hologram does.

But it wasn't until 1979
that Berkeley neurophysiologists Russell and Karen DeValois made the discovery
that settled the matter. Research in the 1960s had shown that each brain cell
in the visual cortex is geared to respond to a different pattern—some brain
cells fire when the eyes see a horizontal line, others fire when the eyes see a
vertical line, and so on. As a result, many researchers concluded that the
brain takes input from these highly specialized cells called feature detectors,
and somehow fits them together to provide us with our visual perceptions of the
world.

Despite the popularity
of this view, the DeValoises felt it was only a partial truth. To test their
assumption they used Fourier's equations to convert plaid and checkerboard
patterns into simple wave forms. Then they bested to see how the brain cells in
the visual cortex responded to these new wave-form images. What they found was
that the brain cells responded not to the original patterns, but to the Fourier
translations of the patterns. Only one conclusion could be drawn. The brain was
using Fourier mathematics—the same mathematics holography employed—to convert
visual images into the Fourier language of wave forms.

The DeValoises’
discovery was subsequently confirmed by numerous other laboratories around the
world, and although it did not provide absolute proof the brain was a hologram,
it supplied enough evidence to convince Pribram his theory was correct. Spurred
on by the idea that the visual cortex was responding not to patterns but to the
frequencies of various wave forms, he began to reassess the role frequency
played in the other senses.

It didn't take long for
him to realize that the importance of this role had perhaps been overlooked by
twentieth-century scientists. Over a century before the DeValoises’ discovery,
the German physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz had shown that the
ear was a frequency analyzer. More recent research revealed that our sense of
smell seems to be based on what are called osmic frequencies. Bekesy's work had
clearly demonstrated that our skin is sensitive to frequencies of vibration,
and he even produced some evidence that taste may involve frequency analysis.
Interestingly, Bekesy also discovered that the mathematical equations that
enabled him to predict how his subjects would respond to various frequencies of
vibration were also of the Fourier genre.

The Dancer as
Wave Form

But perhaps the most
startling finding Pribram uncovered was Russian scientist Nikolai Bernstein's
discovery that even our physical movements may be encoded in our brains in a
language of Fourier wave forms. In the 1930s Bernstein dressed people in black
leotards and painted white dots on their elbows, knees, and other joints. Then
he placed them against black backgrounds and took movies of them doing various
physical activities such as dancing, walking, jumping, hammering, and typing.

When he developed the
film, only the white dots appeared, moving up and down and across the screen in
various complex and flowing movements. To quantify his findings he
Fourier-analyzed the various lines the dots traced out and converted them into
a language of wave forms. To his surprise, he discovered the wave forms
contained hidden patterns that allowed him to predict his subjects’ next
movement to within a fraction of an inch.