CAM Modalities Can Stimulate Advances in Theoretical Biology

Most complementary medicine is distinguished by not being supported by underlying theory accepted by Western science. However, for those who accept their validity, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities offer clues to understanding physiology and medicine more deeply. Ayurveda and vibrational medicine are stimulating new approaches to biological regulation. The new biophysics can be integrated to yield a single consistent theory, which may well underly much of CAM—a true ‘physics of physick’. The resulting theory seems to be a new, fundamental theory of health and etiology. It suggests that many CAM approaches to health care are scientifically in advance of those based on current Western biology. Such theories may well constitute the next steps in our scientific understanding of biology itself. If successfully developed, these ideas could result in a major paradigm shift in both biology and medicine, which will benefit all interested parties—consumers, health professionals, scientists, institutions and governments

A Complexity Basis for Phenomenology: How information states at criticality offer a new approach to understanding experience of self, being and time

In the late 19th century Husserl studied our internal sense of time passing, maintaining that its deep connections into experience represent prima facie evidence for it as the basis for all investigations in the sciences: Phenomenology was born. Merleau-Ponty focused on perception pointing out that any theory of experience must in accord with established aspects of biology i.e. embodied. Recent analyses suggest that theories of experience require non-reductive, integrative information, together with a specific property connecting them to experience. Here we elucidate a new class of information states with just such properties found at the loci of control of complex biological systems, including nervous systems. Complexity biology concerns states satisfying self-organized criticality. Such states are located at critical instabilities, commonly observed in biological systems, and thought to maximize information diversity and processing, and hence to optimize regulation. Major results for biology follow: why organisms have unusually low entropies; and why they are not merely mechanical. Criticality states form singular self-observing systems, which reduce wave packets by processes of perfect self-observation associated with feedback gain g=1. Analysis of their information properties leads to identification of a new kind of information state with high levels of internal coherence, and feedback loops integrated into their structure. The major idea presented here is that the integrated feedback loops are responsible for our ‘sense of self’, and also the feeling of continuity in our sense of time passing. Long-range internal correlations guarantee a unique kind of non-reductive, integrative information structure enabling such states to naturally support phenomenal experience. Being founded in complexity biology, they are ‘embodied’; they also fulfill the statement that ‘The self is a process’, a singular process. High internal correlations and RenéThom-style catastrophes support non-digital forms of information, gestalt cognition, and information transfer via quantum teleportation. Criticality in complexity biology can ‘embody’ cognitive states supporting gestalts, and phenomenology’s senses of ‘self,’ time passing, existence and being

Quantum Fluctuation Fields and Conscious Experience: How Neurodynamics Transcends Classical and Quantum Mechanics

Subjective experience presents a conundrum to science. Those convinced of its reality recognise that it requires explanation, but that classical physics is unable to provide one. They often assume that, as a consequence, quantum mechanics must provide the basis for a theory. However, consciousness seems able to reduce quantum wave packets, a process that quantum wave functions cannot accomplish, ruling out that approach. Recent research suggests that fluctuations at critical instabilities provide a non-reductive, double aspect information theory, i.e. properties identified as necessary aspects of any theory of experience. Due to complexity, biological systems support critical instabilities. Complexity means that they obey principles like Edge of Chaos and Fractal Physiology, and that organisms are not mechanical systems. Critical instabilities are in turn supported by the principle of Self-Organised Criticality, well known to be exhibited by neuronal cortices. The neurodynamics underlying experience and consciousness encompasses critical instabilities on networks of neurons. Due to a famous theorem from material science, the spin-glass neural network isomorphism, such instabilities can have arbitrary complexity, and can model and control genetic networks, well known to function at the Edge of Chaos. Here we show how information on sensory pathways enters conscious experience by means of the process of Inhibition of Lateral Inhibition identified by Karl Pribram, and making possible holographic representation of sense information

CAM and the Phenomenology of Pain

Many CAM modalities afford relief from pain, each in its own way, or according to its own terminology. Comparison of different CAM modalities results in a simple phenomenology of pain centered around the idea that pain may be associated with blockages of the flow of energy in the system of nadis/acupuncture meridians

CAM and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

In the form of the Transcendental Meditation program CAM offers a method of eliminating deep-rooted stress, the efficacy of which has been demonstrated in several related studies. Any discussion of CAM and post-traumatic stress disorder should include a study of its application to Vietnam War Veterans in which improvements were observed on all variables, and several participants were able to return to work after several years of being unable to hold a job. The intervention has been studied for its impact on brain and autonomic nervous system function. It has been found to be highly effective against other stress-related conditions such as hypertension, and to improve brain coherence—a measure of effective brain function. It should be considered a possible ‘new and improved mode of treatment’ for PTSD, and further studies of its application made

New Light on Chromotherapy: Grakov's ‘Virtual Scanning’ System of Medical Assessment and Treatment

Virtual Scanning incorporates novel uses of colored light into its system of health assessment and therapy. Independent investigations of its effectiveness in Russia and the UK have revealed unique abilities to correct incipient and fully developed chronic conditions. As such it forms an important new addition to the field of Chromotherapy. It differs from most others, in that its development depended on discoveries in neuroscience by its inventor, and subsequent application of new models in computational neuroscience

First Person Accounts of Yoga Meditation Yield Clues to the Nature of Information in Experience

Since the millennium, first person accounts of experience have been accepted as philosophically valid, potentially useful sources of information about the nature of mind and self. Several Vedic sciences rely on such first person accounts to discuss experience and consciousness. This paper shows that their insights define the information structure of experience in agreement with a scientific theory of mind fulfilling all presently known philosophical and scientific conditions. Experience has two separate components, its information content, and a separate ‘witness aspect', which can reflect on all forms of experience, and with training be strengthened until its power of reflection identifies it as the innermost aspect of ‘self'. The Vedic sciences, Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta develop these themes. Samkhya identifies the different aspects of experience, outer and inner; Yoga practices lead the mind to inner states of zero information content (Samadhi) in which the experience of the witness (Sakshi) is strengthened and deepened. Vedanta states the nature of the ‘self' is to know itself directly without intermediary.  All this requires the witness to have a singular loop structure. The information structure of experience therefore has two aspects, information content plus a singular loop endowing it with a subjective sense of ‘Self'.