The Brain:  Generator, Antenna and/or Receptacle? Implications for Types and Extent of Unusual Cognition

James Giordano, Ph.D

Current neuroscientific techniques and technologies – taken together with information from the physical, natural and social sciences – are enabling deeper understanding and more complete insight to the structural and functional relationships of the brain. While the mechanisms of consciousness remain unknown, contemporary investigations and discussion center upon whether the brain acts as a generator, antenna, receptacle – or some combination of each and all – in the functions and properties of consciousness.

It may be, for example, that particular assemblages of neural networks enable peculiar sensitivity to specific dimensions and domains of the environment that are evidenced in and by certain individuals’ putatively apparent capacity for (spatially and/or temporally) remote sensing.

Bio

James Giordano PhD, MPhil, is a neuroscientist and neuroethicist with over three decades of professional contribution to the field. He is Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, and Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, and Senior Scientific Advisory Fellow of the Defense Operational Cognitive Science group, SMA Branch, of the Joint Staff of the Pentagon.