In contrast to most of these webpages, many of the following sections on the mind tend to be speculative. Their intent is to explore a physical basis for memory, that ever-changing but essential ingredient of thought, learning, and communication of ideas.

Effective communication of ideas, to others or to oneself, depends on the ability to organize and fluently present a point of view that can be readily comprehended and absorbed. Ideas reflect thought and emotional patterns characteristic of individual mindsets that describe consciousness states. These patterns embrace a complex range of mental properties that comprise a field of mental excitations within the brain. Mind field properties are excited by sensory bodily sources and transmitted via the body's nervous system to different parts of the cerebral cortex. The brain is the seat of memory and thought phenomena, the biologic and neurologic physics of which still remains incomplete. The mind seems to have a life of its own, characterized at times by intentional thought patterns as well as by a pestering miscellany of non-intentional stray thoughts. A long-standing human problem is that of developing volitional control of mental properties, particularly those related to attention and memory. How much control of mental phenomena can be gained from current psycho-biological and psycho-neurological research into the physical mechanisms underlying thinking? It is this question that we address within the context of neuronal transmission of complex sensory stimuli to various areas of the cortex, and the consequent excitation of memory and thought processes throughout the brain.

In borrowing the field concept from physics, we note that a field is a region at each point of which measurable properties can be excited by external or internal sources. In the absence of sources there is no field excitation. For humans, external or internal bodily sensory sources (eye, ear,…) give rise to mental excitations within the brain region and thereby establish the mind field. Sensory stimuli are in some degree always present and generate conscious, sub-conscious, or un-conscious excitation states.

An individual’s state of consciousness or mindset arises from a complex of sensory stimuli. To emphasize this point, response excitations to such multi-faceted stimuli characterize a conscious state that may be represented symbolically by a complex field:
Y(x,t) ® { V(x,t), A(x,t), T(x,t), O(x,t), G(x,t), E(x,t) }
whose elements V, A, T, O, G, E are measures in some not necessarily numerical sense, of the intensity, etc., of visual V(x,t), aural A(x,t), tactile T(x,t), olfactory O(x,t), gustatory G(x,t), and emotional E(x,t) sensory responses, and vary with one’s spatial location x and time t.

At the macroscopic level external and internal stimuli, sensed by bodily organs, excite the central nervous system and give rise to mental excitations either as direct perceptions or as thoughts. The latter form a complex blend of higher-level image (eidetic), verbal, tactile, etc excitations, stored in memory and recallable with varying degrees of age dependent effectiveness. Psychological studies of thinking and memory, as well of related phenomena of forgetting and recognition, provide behavioral data on storage and retrieval times of thoughts, but the ability to apply these data to improve memory and learning is difficult. Application difficulties originate from the intentional nature of higher order thinking and its vulnerability to interference by stray stimuli.

Long-term memory storage usually weakens with age. Early childhood memories appear to belie this " use it or lose it" observation since many long-term memories are frequently associated with traumatic or other impressionable perceptions. This latter feature suggests that clarity of mind and disciplined awareness is indispensable to avoid intrusive interference with long-term memory storage. A sophisticated level of awareness and focus requires intentional ordering and linkage of memory impressions as well as repetitive storage of memory items into organized subject areas. Behavioral psychobiological studies have led to a deeper comprehension of sensory awareness not only at instinctive animal levels but as well at higher levels of human awareness. Various awareness and associative exercises have been suggested for more effective storage and recall of memory imprints. Biochemical research on memory imprinting and forgetting has led to an awareness of the importance of neuro-transmitter and receptor chemicals released within different centers of the cerebral cortex and midbrain during such mental processes. Pharmaceutical uses of these chemicals for control of mental disease have proliferated. These advances have not been matched by a corresponding understanding of the physical mechanisms operative at the neuronal level.

The physiological structure of the human body comprises sensory and perceptual organs, a central nervous system, a circulatory blood system, etc., all of which are essential for life and learning. The central nervous system comprises the brain and midbrain, the brain stem, and a limbic part. It is within the essentially human part of this structure, the cerebral cortex, composed of neuronal cells and blood vessels, that the mind field of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious states of mental activity is generated. The neuronal structure of our old animal mid-brain and limbic system determine many of our basic instincts, while Darwinian evolution has provided us with an enlarged cortex and higher level reasoning abilities. The developing understanding of the global neuronal network involved in higher levels of conceptual reasoning and its physical relation to learning, memory and concentration, as well as the connection between micro and macro biologic levels of mental activity, is one of the exciting open areas of neurobiological research.

Mental excitations are propagated throughout the neuronal medium at approximately meter per second speeds that depend on whether they are of a diffusive biochemical nature or a dynamic electrical phenomenon. The associated biochemical and electrical activity at neuron dendrites and synapses suggest metaphysically a picture of some kind of dendritic excitations, autonomically sustained by heart and lung rhythms. These "resonant" excitations, which may form the basis of consciousness and memory, seem to be stored differently within the heterogeneous neuronal medium. They may represent diffusive and oscillatory phenomena that are stored with differing life times in a spatio-temporal mind field. It is these chemical and wave space-time patterns that may distinguish our short time and long time memory, but no physical measurements have as yet revealed any mechanism for such oscillatory phenomena.

What are the observable properties that provide a measure of mind field excitations? Neuronal electric potentials, in the form of alpha, delta, theta waves measurable by electroencephalograph (EEG) techniques, can reveal qualitative information on cognitive as well as epileptic states of the brain. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) provide qualitative information on cerebral locations of neurotransmitter and other chemicals released during learning. In particular, left and right brain activity has been associated, respectively, with analytic and verbal as opposed to visual and limbic activities.

A week long patch over an eye of a young kitten causes dendritic death of the associated area of its visual cortex as well as permanent retinal blindness in the patched eye. Learning experiments on birds, using invasive techniques, indicate an increase of dendrite numbers in cortical areas associated with learning. Recent observations, via chemical tracers, appear to show neuron cell replication at all ages in animals and humans. Studies of cortical infarct injuries, leading to neuronal death in the affected areas of the cortex, have shown that mental exercises invigorate neighboring cortical areas and frequently result in remedial cortical reorganization. Although such observables are not quantitative measures of a field, a not unexpected observation in matters relating to the human psyche, they do suggest that mental and physical exercises enhance dendrite numbers in specific cortical areas.

Thinking involves a higher order synthesis of the manifold sensual responses represented by Y(x,t). These sensory elements excite, in different regions of the cortex, chemical and electrical patterns that may be locatable via MRI and MEG scans. Even in the absence of willful thinking there also appears to be an omnipresent state of subconscious random mental excitations. At the neuronal level, interference between intentional and random states may lead to a nonlinear chaos type phenomenon that results in self-organization of neuronal activity and to emergent structures representative of creativity. Memory, recognition, forgetting appear to involve, respectively, complete, partial, or no recall of the state Y(x,t).

The following links, which provide a brief review of some biological structures involved in the neuronal excitation of mental phenomena, may be helpful in understanding many of the psychological factors affecting information transfer:

The Brain
Neurotransmitters and Receptors
Human Anatomy .

Thinking provides a control of higher order consciousness in which intention controls recall and memory imprints. The latter appear to be associated with dendrite and synaptic numbers and activity within the cerebral cortex. Emotional states control the biochemical distribution and density of neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain. Our willful control and association of memory patterns links our various perceptions and thereby forms our human consciousness and cognitive abilities. Although control of mental excitations may be at a metaphysical stage, elucidation of properties of the mind field may suggest a route to achieving such control.

Our conscious state of thinking at any instant results from a rich mix of external sensory and internal limbic (emotional and discomfort) system stimuli. Such stimuli give rise to a broad spectrum of verbal, visual, etc, memory imprints. Since the mind appears to have a life of its own, independently of sensory stimuli, involuntary stray thoughts are periodically being dredged up from past memory imprints and though weakened with time may interfere with volitional recall. The balance between involuntary and voluntary mental states, or otherwise stated between awareness and concentration levels of consciousness, determines the intensity of memory imprints and hence it is important to understand possible techniques for control of these levels.

Memory comprises a visual, verbal, auditory, etc., mix with differing ease of recall depending markedly on an individual's environmental history. Recall may be intentional or non-intentional, the former being intimately related to the ability to concentrate on and thereby link different thought imprints within the cortex. Well organized and linking of thoughts in memory areas during learning seems to be a necessary prerequisite for successful memory recall and demands awareness, associative ability, and concentration. Concentration may be initiated via any one of many awareness procedures volitionally designed to help free the mind of unrelated extraneous thoughts and provide focus on specific areas. For example, a useful procedure for maintaining awareness and concentration is periodically to soliloquize verbally on all memory imprints connected to a subject area. Since weakly imprinted past memory events not relevant to a specific area usually form an omnipresent noise background, it is important to explore methods of overriding such events so as not to lose the momentum of the focused portion of the soliloquy.

Creative thinking, which appears to be an expression of a higher order of consciousness, comprises a mix of conscious and subconscious thought patterns, the latter probably representative of somewhat random information. Such a mix of concentration and random states may be achievable by a "stream of consciousness" thinking about all possible thought associations within a given area. To initiate such thinking, language and imagery seem to provide a fluent, but relatively slow, means of recalling and connecting information. One relevant aspect of the free associative process in conceptual thinking is that it is relatively less exhausting for the mind to wander within a forest of ever-changing thoughts rather than concentrate on older embedded thoughts. Thus, one should be both aware and wary of overly extended concentration because of the fatigue factor associated with undue fixation rather than fluency in thinking. Meditative procedures offer avenues to awareness states that can lead to higher level of consciousness and attention and to more effectively control memory imprints during individual learning.

The Socratic dictum "Know Thyself" implies, in part, that understanding the mind involves knowledge of mental techniques for enhancing volitional control of mental excitations. Many meditative exercises have been suggested to override chaotic stimuli clouding learning and memory and to avoid mental "blocks" that impede an individual's creative abilities. Since creative thinking appears to involve a mix of volitional and random thoughts that exploit such mixed states of mind, meditative methods for achieving relaxed awareness, coupled with memory exercises also may offer means for enhancing concentration. There are many individual approaches to creating meditatively based mental states designed to achieve awareness and control of one's state of mind. Such approaches also may relieve anxiety or emotional discomfort and even intentionally induce sleep. The following are suggestions:

Clearing the mind of all thoughts is an essential first step, attainable for example via a meditative breathing method whose primary intent is to create a relaxed awareness state. The breathing method concentrates repetitively on an in breath and an out breath for a sufficient length of time to achieve natural rhythmic breathing and then by intention lead to relaxed awareness. Alternative procedures utilize some kind of mantra for the repetitive in and out breathing phase.

After a relatively short rhythmic breathing period necessary to achieve mind clearing, one should attempt to drift into a state of relaxed awareness and allow the mind to move intentionally and fluently into a pleasant mental task with the intent of submerging mental or emotional discomfort. This requires practice in alternately moving easily between rhythmic breathing and an intentional effort.

Alternatively, on achieving relaxed awareness, focus on a specific task by attempting to recall all thoughts associated with the task and by avoiding irrelevant intrusive thoughts. This is a concentration exercise that is perhaps best pursued by sorting and associatively restructuring the task in an image or verbal outline form. Potential creative elements in this sequence frequently result from an intentional but free wheeling stream of consciousness review of an area that allows random thoughts to link into a novel view of the chosen task.