Great advances have been made in signaling information on brain activity in individuals, or passing between an individual and a computer or robot. These include recording of natural activity using implants under the scalp or by external means or the reverse feeding of such data into the brain. In one recent example, noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) allowed feeding of digitalized information into the central nervous system (CNS). Thus, noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of motor signals at the scalp, representing specific motor intention of hand moving in individual humans, were fed as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) at a maximum intensity of 2.0[Formula: see text]T through a circular magnetic coil placed flush on each of the heads of subjects present at a different location. The TMS was said to induce an electric current influencing axons of the motor cortex causing the intended hand movement: the first example of the transfer of motor intention and its expression, between the brains of two remote humans. However, to date the mechanisms involved, not least that relating to the participation of magnetic induction, remain unclear. In general, in animal biology, magnetic fields are usually the poor relation of neuronal current: generally "unseen" and if apparent, disregarded or just given a nod. Niels Bohr searched for a biological parallel to complementary phenomena of physics. Pertinently, the two-brains hypothesis (TBH) proposed recently that advanced animals, especially man, have two brains i.e., the animal CNS evolved as two fundamentally different though interdependent, complementary organs: one electro-ionic (tangible, known and accessible), and the other, electromagnetic (intangible and difficult to access) - a stable, structured and functional 3D compendium of variously induced interacting electro-magnetic (EM) fields. Research on the CNS in health and disease progresses including that on brain-brain, brain-computer and brain-robot engineering. As they grow even closer, these disciplines involve their own unique complexities, including direction by the laws of inductive physics. So the novel TBH hypothesis has wide fundamental implications, including those related to TMS. These require rethinking and renewed research engaging the fully complementary equivalence of mutual magnetic and electric field induction in the CNS and, within this context, a new mathematics of the brain to decipher higher cognitive operations not possible with current brain-brain and brain-machine interfaces. Bohr may now rest.
The origin of life is an extraordinary problem that leads back to the structure and dynamics of the cosmos and early development of organic molecules. Within that wider question lies an unsolved problem that has troubled biologists for 150 years. What is the origin of the dominant presence of left-handed stereoisomers of amino acids in nature even though their synthesis normally results in an equal mixture of the right- and left-handed molecular forms? We propose that asymmetric Earth rotation caused at dawn and dusk circularly polarized UV light (CPUVL) of opposite polarity and reversed temperature profiles in the oceans. Destruction of the d-isomer by CPUVL at dusk in a sea surface hotter than at dawn created a daily l-isomer excess protected from radiation by nightfall, preserved by down-flow (diffusive, mechanical) into cold, darker regions, eventually initiating an l-amino-acid excess embodied in early marine forms. Innumerable mechanisms have been proposed for the origin of l-chiral dominance in amino acids and none proven. Since the thalidomide tragedy, homochirality of amino acids has been a growing practical issue for medicine. Understanding its origin may bring further and unexpected benefits. It may also be a modest pointer to the possibility of positive answers to whether intelligent life will have the capacity to continue to protect itself from conditions inimical to survival.
Two concepts have long dominated vertebrate nerve electrophysiology: (a) Schwann cell-formed myelin sheaths separated by minute non-myelinated nodal gaps and spiraling around axons of peripheral motor nerves reduce current leakage during propagation of trains of axon action potentials; (b) "jumping" by action potentials between successive nodes greatly increases signal conduction velocity. Long-held and more recent assumptions and issues underlying those concepts have been obscured by research emphasis on axon-sheath biochemical symbiosis and nerve regeneration. We hypothesize: mutual electromagnetic induction in the axon-glial sheath association, is fundamental in signal conduction in peripheral and central myelinated axons, explains the g-ratio and is relevant to animal navigation.
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