(no subject)

Hi Both, Yesterday, I spoke to Ray on skype. I don't know if you know his paper url below,

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/metrics?id=10.1371%2Fjou=nal.pone.0121791

but he is struggling with the same questions that we are. What is the channel for these experiences. He feels that we are both at the cutting edge of Neuroscience and would very much like to work with us. Elena, since you are the fMRI guru of the group, would you be happy to include Ray in the team? He is outstanding and I am sure could take us a leap forward. I have looked him up on the internet and he is the main fMRI guy for Princeton.

I described our experiment to Ray and he was very excited. He has been doing some work on communication in fMRI scanners in which there are two people, and is essentially defining two channels of information between two people. One channel carries conventional information and the other does not. His concept is of a representation of the external world within the brain which limits the transfer of information and which is not involved with the second channel. People who are exceptional can make a limited area of their cortex work while others use the Cartesian representation of their world with the severe limitations that this has on activating cortical areas directly. It is as if this representation is removed in people like Alain. Of course this might represent awakening, so a more direct view to an alternative channel becomes available. This of course is in line with the transmissional view of consciousness. He has published one paper on this subject for which I have given you the url. We need new words for energy. He argues that the light we see from Alain is travelling down this alternative pathway and is not directly related to photons. Remember the goggles attenuated some brain function but did not alter the gamma and people could still 'see' something.

We could argue for one channel carrying information about the energy people feel and some of the light but not all. He is wanting to complete his new paper with his new ideas on which he has been working for two years and hopes to publish soon. He describes the enormous problem anyone has when trying to publish radically new data.

I would very much like to pursue this further. If you would like Ray to be on board (Elena this is your call), Alain has agreed to go to Princeton so Ray can look at him (I have not mentioned this to Ray until I know what you both think). Lena, one of the structures which lights up in the alternative channel is the precuneus (he didn't tell me the other ones) but with a 2-3% increase only. Would you be able to look at this and we can discuss this later.

Joy, we will need to get the paper published asap or submitted for its first rejection (he'd had many), but we must decide exactly what we are going for. I suggest a longer paper with input from the results of social functioning. If we do decide to go forward I would be happy to go to Paris when Jeffrey comes across to try and get money for a more advanced study. If you're happy to include Ray in the team then I will ask him if he could do one or two experiments on Alain but I don't want to do this till Elena decides if she wants to go forward on this exciting project. Yours in hope for an exciting study!

Peter