Experiencing pain: electromagnetic waves, consciousness, and the mind

" Studies of nociception resulted in a theory in which the quality of pain – the suffering - arises when action potentials (APs) from the thalamus that encode information about an injury induce a long-term potentiation (LTP) at synapses on pyramidal neurons in a pain center (PC) within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The LTP sensitizes transmission across the synapses via the activation of adenylate cyclase-1 (AC-1) and protein kinase A (PKA). It also generates Electromagnetic (EM) waves that now contain the information about the pain. The pain is experienced when the waves reach consciousness. Blocking the AC-1, PKA, or the waves attenuates the pain. The theory was founded on the response to a simple injury. I now discuss the role of other cortical centers involved in pain. Attention to pain is governed by circuits in the anterior insula cortex (IC); fear, which enhances the intensity of pain, involves circuits in the basal nucleus of the amygdala; and reward, which can attenuate pain, is regulated by activity in the nucleus accumbens (NucA). Evidence shows that injury-evoked APs induce LTP and the generation of EM waves in the IC, amygdala, and the NucA. Interactions between the waves from the PC with those from the amygdala or NucA can enhance or reduce pain, respectively. These findings reinforce the earlier theory that the information in the EM waves results in sensory experiences in consciousness. I now propose that the summation of the sensory experiences becomes knowledge in the mind, which is an entity distinct from the brain." {Credits 1}

" The studies of pain have provided important insights as to how sensory information culminates in a consciousness of an injury. Since audition, vision and the activation of the IC also generate unique EM waves, we can extrapolate the data from the studies of pain to create a general theory of mind (Figure 4). Thus, at every waking instant in time, we attend to one of these senses, thereby resulting in the generation of EM waves that encode information unique to that sensation. After enhancement or attenuation via interactions with other waves, the information in each of the waves becomes a sensory experience in consciousness and it is the summation of all these experiences in consciousness that culminates in a coherent conceptualization of the world over time. Each conscious sensory experience also yields information that is conveyed to the mind where it becomes the knowledge that is the foundation for ideas, etc. That is, the brain collects and collates information from our senses, converts the information into EM waves that then convey the information to consciousness, which communicates with the mind. What cannot be excluded is the intriguing possibility that the brain-mind interaction might be a closed loop in which the mind influences the activity of neurons in the brain via ephaptic interactions (MacIver, 2022)." {Credits 1}

{Credits 1} 🎪 Ambron R (2025) Experiencing pain: electromagnetic waves, consciousness, and the mind. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 19:1568019. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1568019. © 2025 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.