Susan Pockett’s Electromagnetic Consciousness: The Field Theory That Arrived from the Other Side of the World

Language: en

Two Scientists, One Conclusion, Zero Collaboration

In the history of science, independent convergence — when two researchers, working separately, arrive at the same conclusion — is considered the strongest evidence that the conclusion is correct. When Darwin and Wallace independently discovered natural selection. When Newton and Leibniz independently invented calculus. When McFadden in Surrey, England, and Pockett in Auckland, New Zealand, independently proposed that consciousness is an electromagnetic field.

Susan Pockett, a biophysicist at the University of Auckland, published “The Nature of Consciousness: A Hypothesis” in 2000 — two years before McFadden’s CEMI paper. Working without knowledge of McFadden’s developing theory, drawing on different evidence, using different arguments, she arrived at essentially the same radical conclusion: conscious experiences are identical to certain spatiotemporal patterns of the brain’s electromagnetic field.

This independent convergence is not a coincidence. It is a signal. When two trained scientists, approaching the same problem from different directions with different methodologies, arrive at the same answer, the answer deserves serious attention.

Pockett’s Formulation: Consciousness as Spatial Patterns

Pockett’s formulation differs from McFadden’s in emphasis and detail, and the differences are instructive.

McFadden emphasizes the EM field as an information integration mechanism. His primary argument is that the EM field solves the binding problem by physically unifying information from distributed neural sources.

Pockett emphasizes the EM field as the conscious experience itself. Her primary argument is that specific spatiotemporal electromagnetic patterns ARE specific conscious experiences — that there is a one-to-one mapping between field patterns and qualia.

Pockett’s hypothesis, stated precisely: “Conscious experiences are identical to certain spatiotemporal electromagnetic patterns generated by the normal functioning of the waking brain.”

This is an identity claim, not a causation claim. Pockett does not say the EM field causes consciousness. She says it IS consciousness — in the same way that lightning IS an electrical discharge, not something caused by an electrical discharge.

The key word in Pockett’s formulation is “certain.” Not all EM field patterns are conscious. The brain generates EM fields continuously, including during deep sleep and anesthesia, when consciousness is absent or severely reduced. Pockett argues that only specific patterns — patterns with particular spatial configurations, temporal dynamics, and information content — constitute conscious experiences.

This raises the question: What distinguishes conscious EM field patterns from unconscious ones?

The Spatial Pattern Hypothesis

Pockett proposed that the crucial variable is the spatial configuration of the EM field — the three-dimensional distribution of field strength and direction within the brain volume.

Her argument draws on several lines of evidence:

Local field potentials (LFPs). LFPs — the low-frequency electrical oscillations recorded by electrodes inserted into brain tissue — are direct measurements of the EM field at specific brain locations. Research has shown that LFPs carry information about sensory stimuli, motor plans, and cognitive states that is not contained in the spike patterns of nearby neurons. The EM field, measured by LFPs, contains information beyond what spike patterns encode.

Evoked potentials and consciousness. Specific EEG waveforms — such as the P300 (a positive deflection approximately 300 milliseconds after a stimulus) — are reliable markers of conscious perception. When a stimulus is consciously perceived, the P300 appears. When the same stimulus is not consciously perceived (as in masking or inattentional blindness), the P300 is absent. The P300 is a spatial pattern of the brain’s EM field, and its presence or absence tracks consciousness with high reliability.

Anesthesia and field patterns. General anesthesia abolishes consciousness. The EEG under anesthesia shows characteristic changes — increased slow-wave activity, decreased gamma power, loss of long-range coherence. These changes are changes in the spatial pattern of the brain’s EM field. Pockett argues that anesthesia does not merely correlate with these field changes — it abolishes consciousness precisely because it disrupts the specific field patterns that ARE consciousness.

Visual cortex columnar organization. The visual cortex is organized into columns — vertical arrays of neurons that respond to specific features of visual stimuli (orientation, spatial frequency, color). Pockett noted that the EM fields generated by active columns have specific spatial configurations that differ from column to column. She proposed that the subjective quality of a visual experience (the specific redness of red, the specific orientation of a line) is identical to the specific spatial pattern of the EM field generated by the active column.

The Measurement Predictions

One of the strengths of Pockett’s theory is that it makes specific, testable predictions about the relationship between EM field measurements and conscious experience:

Prediction 1: The same conscious experience should always be associated with the same EM field pattern. If you see the same shade of red on two different occasions, the spatial EM field pattern in your visual cortex should be identical (or very similar) on both occasions, even if the specific neurons involved are different.

This prediction is testable using high-density ECoG (electrocorticography) arrays — electrode grids placed directly on the cortical surface, which provide spatial resolution sufficient to resolve the field patterns associated with specific percepts.

Prediction 2: Different conscious experiences should be associated with different EM field patterns. Seeing red and seeing blue should produce different spatial field patterns, even if the overall field strength is the same. This prediction distinguishes the field theory from simpler “consciousness correlates with overall neural activity” theories.

Prediction 3: Manipulating the EM field should manipulate consciousness. Applying external EM fields to the brain (using TMS, transcranial direct current stimulation, or other technologies) should produce specific changes in conscious experience that correspond to the specific spatial patterns induced by the stimulation.

Prediction 4: Consciousness should be absent when the EM field is disrupted, even if neural firing continues. This is the strongest prediction: if you could selectively disrupt the brain’s EM field without disrupting neural firing (perhaps by canceling the field with a precisely configured external field), consciousness should disappear even though the neurons continue to fire.

These predictions are technically demanding but not impossible to test. As measurement and stimulation technologies improve, the field theory of consciousness will become increasingly amenable to empirical investigation.

Where Pockett and McFadden Converge and Diverge

Convergence:

• Both identify consciousness with the brain’s EM field (not merely correlated with it).
• Both argue that the EM field provides the physical basis for the unity of consciousness.
• Both predict that manipulating the EM field should manipulate consciousness.
• Both view their theories as physicalist — consciousness is a physical phenomenon, fully within the domain of physics.

Divergence:

• McFadden emphasizes the EM field’s causal role — its ability to feed back and influence neural firing, making consciousness causally efficacious. Pockett is more cautious about this causal claim, focusing primarily on the identity claim.
• McFadden frames CEMI as solving the binding problem. Pockett frames her theory as solving the “hard problem” — or at least reducing it to a more tractable form.
• McFadden proposes a specific mechanism for how the EM field becomes causal (it biases neural firing through extracellular field effects). Pockett does not commit to a specific mechanism for causal efficacy.
• Pockett places more emphasis on the spatial configuration of the field (the specific three-dimensional pattern), while McFadden places more emphasis on the information content of the field (the amount and type of information encoded in it).

These differences are complementary rather than contradictory. A complete EM field theory of consciousness would need to incorporate both perspectives: the field’s spatial configuration (Pockett) and its information content and causal efficacy (McFadden).

The Hard Problem: Does the Field Theory Solve It?

David Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness” asks: Why does physical processing give rise to subjective experience? Why does it feel like something to be a brain? Why is there an “inner life” at all?

Does the EM field theory solve the hard problem?

Pockett argues that it transforms the problem. Instead of asking “why does computation in neurons produce consciousness?” (a question that seems unanswerable because there is no obvious connection between computation and experience), we ask “why does an EM field with specific spatiotemporal properties constitute a conscious experience?” This question is still hard, but it is more constrained:

• We know the physical substrate (the EM field).
• We can measure it (EEG, MEG, ECoG, LFP).
• We can manipulate it (TMS, tDCS).
• We can map the correspondence between field patterns and specific experiences.

The hard problem is not solved, but it is localized. We know where consciousness lives (in the EM field), and we can investigate the specific conditions under which it appears and disappears. This is more than any other theory of consciousness has achieved.

Pockett also makes a philosophical point that deserves emphasis: the hard problem may be a pseudo-problem generated by our conceptual framework. If consciousness IS the EM field (identity, not causation), then asking “why does the EM field produce consciousness?” is like asking “why does water produce H2O?” The question dissolves once you recognize the identity. There is no gap to bridge. The field IS the experience. The experience IS the field.

This does not satisfy everyone. Many philosophers insist that the explanatory gap is real — that knowing the physical structure of an EM field does not explain why it feels like something to be that field. But Pockett’s point is that this objection applies to any physical theory of consciousness, including the neural computation theories that the objectors prefer. If the hard problem defeats the EM field theory, it equally defeats the neural theory. The EM field theory is not uniquely vulnerable; it is uniquely informative.

The Global Picture: An EM Field Theory of Consciousness States

Pockett’s framework allows us to map different states of consciousness to different EM field configurations:

Waking consciousness: Complex, high-frequency (gamma and beta band), spatially differentiated EM field patterns with strong long-range coherence between frontal and posterior cortex.

REM sleep (dreaming): Complex, high-frequency patterns similar to waking, but with reduced frontal participation and altered coherence patterns — explaining why dreams are vivid but lack critical self-reflection.

Deep sleep (NREM): Slow, high-amplitude, spatially uniform EM field patterns (delta waves). The field loses its spatial differentiation, becoming a homogeneous oscillation — and consciousness disappears.

Anesthesia: Disrupted long-range coherence with preserved local activity. The EM field fragments — local patches of activity persist, but the unified field pattern that constitutes consciousness is broken.

Meditation: Increased EM field coherence — particularly in alpha (8-12 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) bands — with enhanced synchronization between brain regions. Meditators consistently report enhanced clarity and unity of consciousness, consistent with enhanced field coherence.

Psychedelic states: Dramatically increased EM field entropy (Carhart-Harris, 2014), with novel spatial patterns and increased cross-frequency coupling. The EM field becomes more complex and less predictable — and consciousness expands into novel territories.

This mapping between EM field properties and consciousness states is not proof of the identity claim. But it is exactly what the identity claim predicts: every change in consciousness should correspond to a change in EM field properties, and every change in EM field properties should correspond to a change in consciousness. The correlation is remarkably consistent.

The Legacy: A Theory Waiting for Its Moment

Pockett published her theory in 2000. More than twenty-five years later, it remains largely outside the mainstream of consciousness science — cited by specialists but not widely known.

This obscurity is not because the theory has been refuted. No one has shown that consciousness is NOT the brain’s EM field. The evidence for the identity has only grown stronger as measurement technologies have improved and as the experimental findings of Anastassiou, Fröhlich, and others have demonstrated that EM fields are causally active in the brain.

The obscurity is because the mainstream of consciousness science remains committed to neural computation as the basis of consciousness — a commitment that is more historical and sociological than scientific. The computational theory of mind, which has dominated cognitive science since the 1950s, assumes that the relevant level of description for consciousness is the level of information processing in neural circuits. The EM field is acknowledged as a byproduct of neural activity but is assumed to be epiphenomenal — present but causally irrelevant.

Pockett and McFadden have challenged this assumption with a combination of theoretical argument and experimental evidence. The assumption has not survived the challenge. But the field has been slow to notice.

The moment is coming. As measurement technologies improve, as the experimental evidence for EM field effects accumulates, and as the failures of purely computational theories to solve the binding problem and the hard problem become increasingly apparent, the EM field theory of consciousness will move from the margins to the center of the debate.

When it does, Pockett’s contribution — the careful, independent, New Zealand-based derivation of the same conclusion that McFadden reached in England — will be recognized as one of the foundational works in the science of consciousness.

Two scientists. Two hemispheres. One field. One conclusion: consciousness is electromagnetic. The evidence has been there all along, humming in the space between your neurons, waiting to be recognized for what it is.