The dissipative quantum model of brain and laboratory observations∗

The mesoscopic neural activity of neocortex appears consisting of the dynamical formation of spatially extended domains in which widespread cooperation supports brief epochs of patterned oscillations. These “packets of waves” have properties of location, size, duration and carrier frequencies in the beta-gamma range (12−80 Hz). They re-synchronize, through a sequence of repeated collective phase transitions in cortical dynamics, in frames at frame rates in the theta-alpha range (3 − 12 Hz). The formation of such patterns of amplitude modulated (AM) synchronized oscillations in neocortex has been demonstrated by imaging of scalp potentials (electroencephalograms, EEGs) and of cortical surface potentials (electrocorticograms, ECoGs) of animal and human from high-density electrode arrays [1]-[5]. The AM patterns appear often to extend over spatial domains covering much of the hemisphere in rabbits and cats [6, 7], and over the length of a 64 × 1 linear 19 cm array [1] in human cortex with near zero phase dispersion [8, 9]. Synchronized oscillation of large-scale neuronal assemblies in beta and gamma ranges have been detected also by magnetoencephalografic (MEG) imaging in the resting state and in motor task-related states of the human brain [10].