A recent Salk Institute review argues that traveling electrical waves moving across the visual cortex may not simply be incidental brain activity. Instead, these waves may be part of the computational machinery by which the brain constructs perception, reconstructs recent information, predicts what will happen next, and preserves patterns associated with memory. (ScienceDaily)
That is a remarkable result.
But there is an even more interesting possibility.
What if these waves are not the source of consciousness?
What if they are the physical interface through which consciousness interacts with the physical world?
That question sounds speculative. It is. But it is also precisely the question raised by the DRUMS model of reality.
DRUMS proposes that the physical universe is not fundamentally a collection of independent particles moving through empty space. Instead, it describes reality as a coherent superfluid—UFluid—coupled to an underlying cubic magnetic substrate. Waves, vortices, solitons, phase relationships and other structures emerge from this coupled system. (Drums Theory)
The DRUMS consciousness model takes the argument one step further.
It proposes that consciousness is not necessarily produced by matter. Instead, the physical universe may itself be an expression of consciousness, with the superfluid and magnetic substrate providing the physical architecture through which consciousness becomes localized, interactive and experiential. (Drums Theory)
Put those three ideas together and an intriguing picture emerges:
The brain may not be generating consciousness from nothing. It may be constructing a localized, dynamically updated model of reality through which a conscious process interacts with the physical universe.
And the traveling waves may be one of the mechanisms that makes that possible.
The Conventional Problem: How Does Electrical Activity Become Experience?
The brain is unquestionably physical.
Neurons generate electrical potentials. Synapses change their strengths. Networks oscillate. Signals propagate. Brain regions interact.
But none of that, by itself, explains the central mystery.
Why does any of it feel like something?
We can describe the voltage across a membrane.
We can describe an action potential.
We can measure a traveling wave.
We can map which neurons fire when a person sees an object.
But the measurements remain descriptions of physical activity.
They do not automatically explain why there is an internal experience associated with that activity.
This is the familiar problem often called the "hard problem" of consciousness.
The new research on traveling waves makes the computational side of the problem considerably more interesting.
The Salk researchers propose that traveling waves in the visual cortex can help transform incoming sensory information into internal representations, predictions and memory-related patterns. The waves may effectively carry computational states through the cortex rather than merely transmitting isolated neural signals. (ScienceDaily)
That is already a major conceptual shift.
The brain is beginning to look less like a collection of wires and more like a dynamic field of interacting waves.
And that is exactly where the DRUMS comparison becomes interesting.
DRUMS Starts With a Medium
In DRUMS, the universe is fundamentally a continuous medium.
The UFluid has density, velocity, pressure and phase. Its motion produces waves and vortices. Quantized vortices become persistent structures, while waves and solitons provide mechanisms for propagating energy and information. The underlying magnetic substrate constrains and organizes these dynamics. (Drums Theory)
This is fundamentally different from the conventional picture of independent particles existing in empty space.
And there is an important consequence.
Information does not have to be represented solely as a collection of independent objects.
It can be represented as a state of the medium.
A wave is not a thing moving through an otherwise irrelevant background.
The wave is a changing state of the medium itself.
That distinction matters enormously when we begin talking about brains.
The Brain Also Appears to Be Computing With Waves
The Salk research describes traveling neural waves as potentially central to perception and memory.
These waves move through neural circuits.
They interact with the connectivity of those circuits.
They are affected by learned changes in synaptic weights.
And the resulting activity can encode information about the environment.
The researchers propose four broad functions for the waves:
- modifying perception from moment to moment,
- constructing internal representations from recent sensory information,
- generating short-term predictions,
- preserving and replaying patterns associated with memory. (ScienceDaily)
Notice what that means.
The brain isn't merely receiving an image and displaying it.
It is constructing an internal state.
The outside world provides incomplete and constantly changing sensory information.
The brain combines that information with what it has already learned.
The resulting wave patterns help determine what the organism actually perceives.
In other words:
Reality enters as sensory data, but experience emerges from the dynamically evolving internal state.
That is extremely compatible with the DRUMS picture of a physical system in which coherent waves and localized structures continually interact.
The Observer Is Not Outside the System
One of the most unusual aspects of the DRUMS consciousness proposal is its treatment of the observer.
The observer is not an external entity standing outside the universe and looking inward.
The observer is itself a localized structure within the medium.
In the DRUMS description, a conscious observer can be conceptualized as a localized vortex or coherent node in the superfluid. The observer therefore participates in the same physical system that it is attempting to understand. (Drums Theory)
This creates an interesting solution to a problem that otherwise seems almost paradoxical.
Why can't an observer know the entire physical state of reality?
Because the observer is part of that reality.
It cannot step outside the system to obtain a complete description of the system.
The observer has only local information.
It receives signals.
It constructs models.
It predicts.
It compares predictions with incoming information.
It modifies its internal state.
And it does all of this while being itself a physical process inside the system.
That is almost exactly the computational architecture suggested by the new neural-wave research.
Perception Is Not a Camera
Consider the familiar experience of looking for your keys.
The keys may be sitting directly in front of you.
Light reaches your eyes.
The retina responds.
Signals reach the visual system.
And yet you can fail to consciously notice the keys.
Then suddenly you see them.
The physical object did not suddenly appear.
Your internal representation changed.
The Salk researchers point to precisely this kind of phenomenon when discussing traveling waves and perception. Their earlier work found relationships between these waves and whether an animal successfully noticed a visual stimulus. (ScienceDaily)
That is extremely important.
It means that perception is not simply:
object → eye → brain → picture
It is closer to:
physical environment → sensory disturbance → propagating neural dynamics → internal model → perception
The brain is therefore not merely a passive receiver.
It is an active model-building system.
And that raises the next question:
What exactly is the thing doing the modeling?
DRUMS Provides a Different Answer
The conventional interpretation is that sufficiently complicated neural computation eventually produces consciousness.
DRUMS asks whether the direction of explanation could instead be reversed.
Perhaps consciousness is fundamental, while physical structures are the mechanisms through which consciousness becomes localized and differentiated.
In that interpretation, the brain does not have to manufacture consciousness from electrically active matter.
It has to provide an extraordinarily sophisticated interface.
The DRUMS consciousness proposal describes the magnetic substrate as analogous to structure or "intent," while the superfluid represents dynamic experience and interaction. A localized observer becomes a node within that larger system. (Drums Theory)
The analogy can therefore be expressed as:
| DRUMS | Brain |
|---|---|
| UFluid | Dynamic neural activity |
| Waves | Traveling neural waves |
| Phase coherence | Coordinated neural states |
| Vortices / localized structures | Localized neural processing |
| Magnetic substrate | Structural constraints and organization |
| Global medium | Distributed neural network |
| Local observer/node | Individual conscious perspective |
| Memory as persistent structure | Learned synaptic/wave patterns |
| Prediction from prior state | Predictive perception |
This does not mean the brain literally contains a tiny cubic magnetic lattice identical to the cosmological substrate.
That would go beyond the evidence.
The deeper correspondence is functional:
Both models describe reality in terms of a dynamic medium whose information is carried by evolving patterns rather than merely by isolated objects.
Memory Becomes a State of the Medium
This is where the new research becomes especially interesting.
According to the Salk framework, learned changes in synaptic connections can shape the wave patterns the visual cortex generates. Those patterns can then help reconstruct recent information and generate predictions about what is likely to occur next. (ScienceDaily)
In other words, memory is not necessarily a static recording sitting somewhere in the brain.
It can be encoded into the dynamics of the system.
That fits naturally with DRUMS.
In DRUMS, information is represented through the configuration and evolution of the underlying medium: phase, vortices, topology, substrate states and their interactions. The system's present configuration contains information about its previous evolution. (Drums Theory)
The same basic idea appears at two different scales:
The system remembers because its present physical state is shaped by its past.
This is not mystical.
It is ordinary dynamical-systems behavior.
A whirlpool remembers the conditions that created it.
A vortex field contains information about its previous evolution.
A magnetic domain structure records its history.
A neural network's synaptic configuration records aspects of its experience.
The fascinating question is whether consciousness represents yet another level of this hierarchy.
Prediction Becomes the Bridge
The most powerful connection may be prediction.
The Salk researchers argue that traveling waves may help the brain predict what will happen next. (ScienceDaily)
That means perception is partly an anticipation mechanism.
The brain does not simply ask:
"What signal just arrived?"
It effectively asks:
"Given everything I know, what is this signal most likely to mean?"
That is precisely what a coherent dynamical system can do.
Its current state constrains its possible future states.
The past has shaped the system.
The present provides new information.
The system evolves toward possible future states.
In DRUMS terminology, the universe is not a static collection of snapshots. It is a continuously evolving topological state. Time itself is described as emerging from the evolution of vortex complexity and the coupled evolution of the superfluid and magnetic substrate. (Drums Theory)
The brain would therefore be a localized version of the same fundamental principle:
A present state contains a compressed history and a set of possible futures.
The Brain as a Localized Model of the Universe
Now the three pieces can be assembled.
DRUMS says:
Reality is a coherent physical medium containing interacting waves, vortices and structured states.
The consciousness proposal says:
Consciousness is not necessarily generated by those structures; the physical universe may instead be the manifestation or interface of a more fundamental consciousness.
The neural-wave research says:
The brain uses traveling waves to transform sensory information into internal representations, predictions and memory.
Put together:
The brain may be a localized dynamical structure through which consciousness constructs and continuously updates a model of its physical environment.
That is a radically different proposition from saying that neurons "create" consciousness.
It says neurons may create the representation through which consciousness experiences the physical world.
The Reflecting-Mirror Idea
This leads to perhaps the strangest implication.
If consciousness is fundamental and the physical universe is its manifestation, then the universe is effectively looking back at itself.
A conscious organism is a localized portion of the universe capable of constructing an internal representation of the larger universe.
The universe produces the organism.
The organism models the universe.
The model becomes part of the universe.
And the resulting conscious node experiences the model from the inside.
That is a feedback loop.
It resembles a mirror pointed at another mirror—not because anything supernatural is required, but because a sufficiently self-referential physical system can contain an internal representation of the larger system of which it is a part.
DRUMS calls the observer a localized node within the medium. (Drums Theory)
The neural-wave research supplies a possible physical mechanism by which such a node continuously constructs its internal representation.
The result is a striking possibility:
Consciousness may not be something that appears after the brain finishes computing. Consciousness may be what the computation is occurring within.
That distinction is enormous.
Why the Traveling Waves Matter
This is why the new research is potentially more important than the headline suggests.
If traveling waves were merely noise, they would tell us little.
But if they are actually performing the integration required for perception, memory and prediction, then the brain is demonstrably using coherent dynamical patterns as an information-processing architecture. (ScienceDaily)
And that is exactly the kind of architecture DRUMS predicts should matter.
The fundamental objects are not necessarily isolated particles.
The important objects are patterns.
Wave patterns.
Phase relationships.
Vortices.
Persistent structures.
Interference.
Feedback.
Resonance.
Memory encoded in configuration.
Prediction emerging from the evolution of the present state.
That is a very different conception of physical reality from the traditional mental picture of billiard-ball particles pushing one another around.
What This Does—and Does Not—Prove
It is important not to overstate the argument.
The Salk research does not demonstrate that consciousness exists outside the brain.
It does not demonstrate that the universe is conscious.
It does not demonstrate that DRUMS is correct.
And the DRUMS consciousness proposal currently does not have a mathematical experiment that directly distinguishes it from conventional neuroscience.
The connection is therefore a hypothesis, not a discovery.
But it is a hypothesis with a potentially interesting experimental direction.
The question is no longer simply:
"Which neurons produce consciousness?"
A broader question becomes possible:
"What physical properties of a coherent dynamical system are necessary for a localized conscious observer to exist?"
That is a much more general question.
And it can potentially be attacked experimentally.
The Testable Prediction
If the DRUMS interpretation is correct, consciousness should ultimately correlate not merely with the amount of neural activity, but with specific properties of the coherent organization of that activity.
The relevant quantities would include things such as:
- phase coherence,
- traveling-wave organization,
- resonance,
- topological structure,
- information persistence,
- synchronization,
- nonlinear feedback,
- and the stability of localized dynamical states.
The crucial prediction would be that conscious experience depends on the organization of the field, rather than simply the number of neurons firing.
That is a testable distinction.
Two brains could produce similar amounts of electrical activity while having very different coherent structures.
If conscious experience tracks the latter rather than the former, the field-based interpretation becomes considerably more interesting.
From Neurons to the Universe
There is an even larger implication.
If the same basic mathematics can describe information-bearing structures at radically different scales, then the brain might not be an isolated exception.
It could be another example of a general principle:
Coherent systems generate localized observers by organizing information into persistent, self-referential dynamical structures.
At the cosmological scale, DRUMS describes waves, vortices and magnetic structures organizing matter and energy.
At the neural scale, experiments reveal traveling waves organizing sensory information and prediction.
At the individual scale, those organized processes constitute a continuously changing model of the world.
And at the experiential level, there is the mystery that remains:
Why does any of this have an inside?
DRUMS offers an answer that conventional physics generally does not require:
Perhaps the "inside" was there first.
Perhaps consciousness is not an accidental product of matter.
Perhaps matter is what consciousness looks like when it becomes structured, localized and observable from within the system.
The Universe as a Participatory System
Under that interpretation, the physical universe becomes something considerably stranger than a machine.
It becomes a participatory system.
The substrate provides structure.
The UFluid provides dynamics.
Waves carry information.
Vortices create persistent localized structures.
Memory is encoded in configuration.
Prediction emerges from the evolution of the present state.
And conscious observers become localized nodes capable of modeling the larger system.
The brain's traveling waves would then have a very different significance.
They would not necessarily be the thing that creates consciousness.
They could be part of the mechanism by which a conscious node experiences, remembers and predicts the physical universe.
The new Salk research does not prove that interpretation.
But it makes the question considerably harder to dismiss.
Because once neuroscience begins describing perception in terms of coherent traveling waves that construct internal reality, the conceptual distance between "brain as machine" and "brain as dynamical interface" becomes much smaller.
And that may be the deeper connection between the three ideas.
- DRUMS proposes a universe made of coherent dynamics.
- The consciousness model proposes that consciousness is fundamental to that universe.
- The new neuroscience shows that the brain constructs experience through coherent dynamics of its own.
If those three observations ultimately belong to the same architecture, then the brain may not be a machine that somehow generates an observer.
It may be the localized instrument through which the observer experiences the universe.
And in that case, consciousness isn't something the universe accidentally produced.
It may be one of the things the universe was doing all along.
Toward a Unified View
DRUMS proposes a universe made of coherent dynamics.
The consciousness model proposes that consciousness is fundamental to that universe.
The new neuroscience shows that the brain constructs experience through coherent dynamics of its own.
If those three observations ultimately belong to the same architecture, then the brain may not be a machine that somehow generates an observer. It may be the localized instrument through which the observer experiences the universe.
And in that case, consciousness isn't something the universe accidentally produced. It may be one of the things the universe was doing all along.