Karl Pribam´s Holographic Theory Applicable to the Brain

David Bohm was not the unique to adopt the ideas of a holographic universe. Karl Pribam (5, 6), neurophysiologist and researcher at the Stanford University (USA), also convinced himself about the holographic nature of the reality and applied David Bohm´s model to examine how and where the memories are stored by the brain. Mainly during the second half of 20th century, many researchers of reputation had convinced themselves of that it did not have a specific place in the brain to store memories. Already in the decade of 1920, neuroscientist Karl Lashley carried out works with brains of rats and concluded for the non-locality of the memory, but it did not arrive to present theoretical explanations on the obtained results. Only from the decade of 1960 on, Karl Pribam brought to the light his explanations based on the holographic theory, and since then he comes receiving support from the science men who research the brain. Pribam believes that the memories are found codified not in neurons or small groups of neurons, as many researchers still believe, but yes, as patterns of derived nervous impulses that intercross in the entire brain, in the same way that patterns of interference from laser light intercross an entire area of a film that contains a holographic image. In other words, Pribam believes that the brain itself is a hologram. Pribam´s theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in a so small space. The best estimates mention a capacity of storage in the order of 10 billion of bits of information during the average life of the contemporary man. It corresponds to the storage of six British Encyclopedia collections.

Curious it is that, in the holographic experiments, this formidable capacity of information storage varies in function of the angle that the two laser rays strike on a photographic film, indicating us that many different images can be stored in the same surface. On the other hand, using the holographic concept, it becomes simpler to understand the fantastic speed, practically instantaneous, with which the information is recovered from our memories, as well as, to understand the numerous associations of ideas and images that have place in our mental operations. According to Pribam, one of the most significant things of the human thought process is that each part of the information seems to cross instantaneously with any other part of the information, and this characteristic is intrinsic and common to a hologram. It is treated, perhaps, of a supreme example of the nature, which uses a correlated cross system, since, each portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with any other portion of all the hologram.

Pribam still affirms that such similarities do not stop thereabout. The memory storage is not the unique neurophysiologic puzzle to have a more acceptable explanation to the light of his theory of the brain model. The other question is how the brain decodes the sudden large amount of physical frequencies that it receives via the physical senses (luminous, sound, smell or osmosis frequencies, etc.) in a concrete world of perceptions. To encode and to decode frequencies are necessarily what a hologram knows how to do. The hologram functions as a species of lens, a mechanism of translation capable to apparently convert blots of frequencies without meaning into a coherent image. Pribam affirms that, the brain also, behaves as if it was a lens and it uses the holographic principles mathematically to convert the frequencies that it receives by means of our physical senses in the interior world of our perceptions. Many researchers who had followed him are sure of this interpretation, among them, the Italian-Argentine researcher Hugo Zucarelli, the psychologist Stanislav Grof and the psychologist Keith Floyd. Several discoveries had been made, proving, for example, that our visual systems has sensitiveness to the sonorous frequencies, that part of our smell sense is dependent of the so-called osmotic frequencies, and that even the cells of our body have sensitiveness to an ample band of frequencies. Such discoveries suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are classified in conventional perceptions.

However, the most disturbing aspect of the holographic brain model happens when it is placed face to the Bohm´s theory, since, if the concreteness of the world is only a secondary reality and what "exists" is really a holographic blot of frequencies, and if the brain is, also, a hologram and selects only some of the frequencies of this blot and mathematically transforms them into sensorial perceptions, what happens with the objective reality? Answering in a simple way, it runs down to exist, it is an illusion. Although we think that we are physical beings moving ourselves on a physical world, this also is an illusion.

In this way (5, 6), "[…] we are simple receivers floating in an ocean of frequencies and what we extract of this ocean and we transform it in physical reality is just one channel among many others, extracted from the super-hologram.”

Bohm´s theory, together with Pribam´s, became known as the holographic paradigm, concept that has been attracting the attention of many physicists. A small, but an increasing group of researchers believe that this paradigm is the most perfect model of reality that science already presented until the moment; more than that, some researchers believe that it will be able to solve some mysteries that never before were explained by science and, even though, to establish the paranormal phenomenon as part of the nature. Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribam, had also observed that many paranormal phenomena become much more understandable on the light of the holographic paradigm.

One of the mysteries is telepathy, phenomenon that exists, but not in a general way. In a universe, where the individual brains are indivisible portions of a bigger hologram and all are infinitely linked, telepathy is explained by the Pribam´s theory as being merely the access of similar holographic levels. It is much easier to understand as thought can travel instantaneously from person "A" to person "B" in any distance, and help to understand some puzzles still not explained by psychology. According to Grof (5, 6), who makes experiences with transpersonal psychology, related with the diverse states of conscience, since 1960, "[…] if the mind is really one part of a continuum, of a labyrinth which is connected not only to each mind that exists or has existed, but also to each atom, organism and to the immense regions of space and time, the fact that (the mind) is capable, occasionally, to make incursions in the interior of this labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences, does not seem anymore so much strange.”

The holographic paradigm has also implications in biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at the Virginia Intermont College, pondered that, if the concreteness of the reality is only one holographic illusion, it is not more truth to say that the brain produces consciousness. To the contrary, it is the conscience that creates the appearance of the brain – as well as the body and all around us that we interpret as being of physical nature. Such overturn in the way to see the biological structures are conducting the researchers to indicate that medicine and our vision of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is not more than a projection of conscience, it becomes clear that each one of us is much more responsible for our health than the medical wisdom admits. What now we see as miraculous cures of certain diseases can really come from changes in conscience, which, by its turn, make changes in the body hologram. Similarly, new controversial techniques of cure, such as visualization, can answer so well because, in the holographic domain of thought, the images are, after all, so real as the "reality.”