Glial Cells: The Missing Dark Matter of the Mind, and the World?

In order for brains to flexibly and accurately perceive, predict, and react to the world, brains are obviously required to operate in ways that parallel the outside world. Because of limited space, and the volume of possible combinations of particular instances of sensations and events, brains must operate according to the principles and laws themselves that drive natural events. This greatly simplifies the survival task of brain matter. For example, when we ride a bike or catch a ball, we are operating according to implicit laws of physics. Isaac Newton, among others, must have been able to scrutinize and translate these organizing processes that are so pervasive in our lives that they are normally not even noticed. Our brain makes (or you might want to say reproduces) these “laws” or principles so that we can exist. The science of physics simplifies and allows us to conceptualize many complex occurrences in the natural world. Calculating a trajectory, or knowing about inertia, is automatic in brains and important for simplifying and predicting the behavior of moving bodies for both science and brain tissue.

Since we need to be able to reconstruct accurately and reliably the outside world inside the brain, there should be regularity in some of the processes of the brain to match the universal (and necessary for existence) simplifying rules of the outside world. That is precisely what we see. We see logarithmic scales in our perceptions (sound for example) only certain discrete wavelengths of light, and a small variety of smell receptors and taste receptors for particular chemical classes. In between these regular perceptual inputs, and some highly organized, somewhat stereotypic, and reflexive motor outputs, there is a place for the organization of theory in the brain--a place for imagination and creativity. Laws and constants of matter and organizing principles in the universe that are encompassed by our brain function are like translations of segments of some sort of "cosmic DNA" specifying world function in the interaction of these relatively compact codes that unify. To us, these laws are constructed by our brains, since all we perceive is from our brains. They are automatically constructed in them under the influence, and due to, the DNA. We have no way of knowing about anything constructed, or possible to construct, beyond what has been important to the maintenance and progression of our existence. In counter-intuitive quantum physics, Godel’s incompleteness theorem (Wang, 1987), and relativity, we find concepts at the edge of our knowledge of our world that demonstrate clearly how we do not perceive everything about the world—there is something BIG missing. We even see that our notions of time and space are narrow. Our view of the world is coherent, and internally consistent within our brains survival-adapted portrayal of the world, but it is a facade—a habitat. The very predictable regularity of the world, within its perceived causal progression of time, allows us to exist and reflect on it. Perhaps we are not just a cork bobbing along in the time stream, but rather need to construct this progression of time in order to exist in a causal, regular, predictable world. Within this regularity-of-natures-processes requirement, there must be enough flexibility to allow the plasticity found in learning, consciousness, behavioral flexibility, and imagination. How can brain tissue give rise to the tangible world, and our intangible, unified experiences of it?

At the neural level, the regularity of the world seems to be what we find. The processes of neurons have a fundamental regularity to them. They are the basic regularities of the world--cut and pasted, mixed and matched—to put together a coherent world. Regularities that we can depend on for our existence—like the laws of science which solidified in the early universe, according to the physicists. Neurons do not divide and reproduce or drastically change shape, function (i.e., a dopamine motor cell, retinal cell, or Cochlear hair cell), or position. Neurons in the retina or in the spinal cord, etc. have extremely organized and specific tasks. One example from the perceptual level in the visual cortex is the work of Hubel and Weisel (1962). They showed the regularity of geometric feature detection present across visual cortex neurons. Many examples also exist at the response, or motor, end of brain functioning--some of the work on stereotypy and the organization of behavior by the striatum for example (Pisa, 1988; Pisa and Schranz, 1988; Romer, 1993).

Both perceptions and responses (along with body perceptions—pain, pleasure, hot, cold, etc.) seem to be fractionated and represented with regularity by neurons and neural groups throughout the brain. Even verbal categories contributing to descriptions of experiences seem mediated by specific neural groups at specific places in the cerebral cortex (Damasio, 1990). This poses a problem when we consider the unity of experience. This problem has recently been named the “binding problem”. Studies using PET scan techniques implicate widely disparate areas of the brain as contributing to unitary perceptions (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991). Imagination can bring unified, vivid "perceptions" to our "minds eye" as well—giving rise to the same profile of activation of the relevant CNS neurons as in the actual experience. We build our world, it seems, with similar neural functions—whether we close our eyes and imagine it, or actually use our perceptual receptors.

A unique characteristic of imagination is the ability to manipulate and recombine actual features of the world in ways that give rise to scenarios that may or may not actually exist. While neurons seem relatively committed to producing certain aspects of experience, some aspect of our brain is able to nudge, corral, and most importantly bring together into unitary perceptions, all of this activity. Additionally, there is plasticity in the size of “mappings” of neural groups in the brain, depending on usage or activity of these groups. Further, we can use analogies, metaphor, and allegory—which is amazing considering the dedication of neural groups. My theory is that these literary devices also use some of the same neural groups as actually construct the real thing--which is also used as prototype for the comparison in the metaphor, etc. How is this possible? How do we recognize these things and their constellation of features? Who is doing this? Why are metaphors possible?

Since neurons seem to provide the raw materials for the rigid world model, involving stable natural laws, that must underlie our experiences, some additional brain process must be controlling and binding their function in some way. The phosphor-dot output of a computer screen means nothing if a human brain does not provide the meaning. Meaning is the key—and controls the terrain of all of our conscious experience, our conscious attention. The problem we must avoid is to posit another "little man" in the brain That oversees and organizes these things—-producing an infinite regression from the necessity to have another “little man” perceiving inside him etc. There is a unity, but it must be some other new factor we have not considered. Neuron function alone cannot possibly give rise to our unified perceptions because of their positioning, functional characteristics, and biological features.

The neurons of the brain pose problems similar to problems encountered with artificial intelligence computer models (Searle, 1984) for the idea of conscious experience or meaning. Information in the brain is thought to be carried by neural action potentials communicating to adjacent neurons much like electrical impulses allow information to travel through a computer. This cannot be the only basis for brain functioning because it would be impossible for us to be able to see a unified experience and describe the features and meaning of it at various levels of detail or levels of organization. We can zoom in and out visually like a camera—paying attention to small details, or large panoramas in our visual field—without moving our eyes even, or conceptually from the particles and molecules of matter to the organization of civilization with our consciousness. Without moving your eyes, to do this zooming or shifting of attention, you are “focusing” on different neural areas within the brain. There must be something unique about the way information exists in brain tissue that is not being considered. There is no other way. Let’s take a look at how we view brain function.

When you get right down to it, there is no such thing as a locus, or "spot" for any function in the brain. There can be no spot for a particular category, or "reward" for example (see Romer, 1992). No neuron detects a feature. The only reason these phenomena have any meaning to our experiments and procedures is that they are embedded in a complex network of events through time that defines them. In other words, is the meaning in these spots? No, it is in the relationships in the brain for which a particular pattern of function arises in a neuron. We trace these events, and then we “see” the meaning of these circuits, with our probes and scientific methods—artificially placing meaning on them. Our methodology tricks us into believing we see the whole story because we project it onto what we see with our own consciousness while investigating neurons and their connectivity. Our own consciousness only sees the “now” of those external neurons in other brains in our studies, but from within, everything about consciousness is time and space transcendant. To illustrate the distributed meaning across neurons, If a single neuron dies, the remaining pattern of surrounding neurons recreates the function of that neuron to a degree. Recovery of function after brain injury may involve a similar process (Romer, 1993) with a loss of details. Each neuron seems to be less important than the overall meaning that it is embedded in. That certainly goes for the whole brain in relation to parts—as we see it from within.

A good example of the type of meaning inherent in neural functioning is the idea of radial categories in linguistic meaning (Lakoff, 1987 pp 91-114)--which resonates very well with my ideas. A word has meaning only because it is related to many other words, experiences, and concepts. Whether we are talking about language, perception, or behavior, the brain of neurons is a similar meaning machine for our consciousness. Each focus of consciousness is like the center of a sea urchin—with the spines being the static representations of dynamic connections to other concepts, places, times, or things. There is only one problem--external and internal language needs an observer to relate contexts and meanings. As an analogy, "meaning" of a protein molecule (its functional significance) lies in its relationship to the network of protein molecules it exists in which in turn is partially determined by the organization and conformation of its elements. Once again we need to see the whole network to get this meaning. The more information that is conceptualized at once, the more meaning. Meaning seems to require a certain simultaneity of information availability--a simiultaneous information reflection top-down and bottom-up. Memory is, of course, absolutely necessary to meaning. Memory is a bringing together of events through time—and the basis for all meaning too. Consciousness is the ultimate in immediate bringing together of disparate elements through both time and space—since the apparent operation of neurons happens at discrete spots in time and space called action potentials.

Consciousness is a problem for theories based solely on neurons. Since bits of information travel along paths, and neurons seem to provide widely separated functions that are components of our unified experience, meaning and consciousness would be impossible—even if the location of functions in sets of neurons were closer together and not so distributed. Libraries of discrete information do not read themselves no matter how many books or floors exist, or how complex or interrelated the information is. We need to be able to explain why separate neural units are apparently not "hidden" to our consciousness like the functional units in neural network models. There must be some overall way that these discrete functions are tied together for meaning, consciousness, imagination, and creativity. Holonomic brain theory (Pribram, 1989) is one way of conceptualizing how the idea of spots in the brain for memories or functions is unlikely. Probably the idea of spots in the brain arose because that is the only way we could conceptualize the data from our methodologies and the fact that we were never equipped in the course of evolution to interpret the functioning of brain material. Our brains are well adapted to reconstructing the world around us, but like quantum physics, there is no reason to believe we have the equipment to implicitly understand the relationships at work, or what we seem to be directly perceiving in looking at brain tissue. Our point of view may be interfering with our understanding—especially because it naturally puts time and space considerations into everything we perceive—one-way causality. The here-and-now quality of external brain investigations makes them fundamentally flawed as a way of “seeing” how consciousness is built.

Some investigators have proposed theories of consciousness based on holographic interference patterns (Pribram, 1989), 40Hz simultaneous oscillations of discrete brain areas (Crick and Koch, 1990), quantum field effects, dendrodendritic micronetwork effects, and cytoskeletal networks (Pribram, 1993 Ed.). Currently there is no direct way of conceptualizing the role of these potential solutions. Except for maybe the quantum field effects, they also suffer from the same basic problems as the neural computer models such as the binding problem, meaning, etc. Although a quantum effect such as Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" (Davies, 1988 p.176) or some sort of instantaneous magnetic or subatomic wave interference may be the key (like a snake with its tail in its mouth when combined with certain ideas from particle physics experiments), we have not yet investigated the biological functioning of all areas of the brain. We may find things happening in the brain that do not fit with any salient external model we may have such as the computer. Gene activators that turn on and off protein production, and the organizing principles behind protein configurations may also provide clues and information. We must consider the analogy between DNA, the production of protein, and the basic principles of the universe that produce us for example. There is a real relationship there. All of these various angles are important pieces of the puzzle. We need to recognize which functions model the basic properties of the outside world, and which may correspond to imagination, creativity, and consciousness. They should be distinctly different. The factor that gives rise to consciousness must transcend time and space somehow—this is the essence of the binding problem, among others—such as the elusive memory engram, or the retrograde messenger in memory models which modifies the Hebbian synaptic circuits. Where should we look first? Certainly if we remove our notions of the flow of time, many of these problems would be solved. How could we find this in the brain, this transcendance of time? Maybe that is what brains do, but we fail to see this by looking in with our here-and-now methodologies.

One area of the biological functioning of brains has been neglected (once again probably because of our strange point of view—since nature prepared us for external perceptions only so that we could survive in the world). Glial cells fill the psychological bill of the dynamics and plasticity of our perception and behavior in relation to consciousness. These cells exist in the nervous system in ten times the number of individual neurons. They have widely been thought to be simply the glue or a scaffold that holds neurons in position, or as providing support functions only. This is highly unlikely. Natural selection has made the brain the most complex structure known to man. There is intense selection pressure for more function in available space. Perhaps there are some very important and neglected functions performed by this "scaffold"--much like the marrow of our bones produces our life blood. The positioning of glial cells is especially important since neurons seem to need some kind of scaffold of meaning or binding to complete the picture of their functioning. Additionally, neurons move along glial cells into position in the brain—the glial cells first form a future “highway” of organization upon which they travel (see my other papers for “future controlling the present/past” ideas in civilization or the universe; Romer, 2001a,2001c,2001d).

Before we posit quantum "spooky action at a distance" (which might be more like the consciousness factor of the universe—see my other papers), we need to investigate the role of glial cells to see if they would provide the simultaneous information reflections or lateral information flow (apart from the flow of time in neurons) necessary to coordinate, control, bind, and select out our experiences from the parallel information flow in groups of neurons. Like the blind spot in the eye where the optic nerves course into the brain, the glial cells may perform a function that is invisible to our space-time experiences, but without which we might be completely in the dark. To use an example from cosmology, scientists posit the existence of dark matter in the interstellar voids to explain the otherwise inexplicable groupings and filament conformations of the galaxies. They have deduced that matter we cannot see exists because of the characteristics of the matter that we can see in the form of stars and galaxies. In the same vein, we must look for some way that the behavior of neurons is grouped, monitored, and triggered without immediate sensory input. Glial cells look surprisingly like that factor. Consciousness cannot fundamentally alter the fundamentals without jeopardizing its own existence—that’s why those neural fundamentals are stable—to a point. Evolution is all about creating a larger world of truth (see my other poster)—we have done an excellent job of speeding that process up with our verbal tools and learning capacity. We create, and advance our species, by learning everything we can and then creating a greater unity in the world by adding knowledge which gives greater meaning to the world.

It is important to fully realize that concepts and paradigms are tools. We need to know how our psychology, evolutionary backgrounds, social dynamics, and paradigms interact with what we are seeing in order to know the truth. Even our personalities themselves are tools developed in our social milieu that can obstruct our viewpoints because they are only one subset of all available brain personalities, or strategies for survival in our life milieus. In the case of mind-brain investigations, we might need many, if not all, of these tools at once because the brain is the organ of all of these things and consciousness is all about wholes.

Any brain theory must be able to explain how we can describe an experience at all levels of analysis and also manufacture new experiences using elements from various levels of analysis. Consciousness gives us access to all of these things simultaneously. It seems reasonable to theorize that glial cells might operate beyond the time and space universe of our perception--maintained and operated by the neurons. Synapses may exist for a number of different reasons: 1. to allow plasticity controlled by glial cell "invisible" information reflections, since consciousness facilitates learning of meaning. 2.to allow levels of analysis to contribute to overall experience and learning, 3. to allow groupings of function or perception via glial cells, 4. to allow wide areas of neurons to be monitored and modulated via glial cell communication network "mirrors" at every level of information flow—based on any one area of function (sounds very holographic here). Glial cell “mirrors” would just reflect the function of neurons to every other neuron by connecting them through time into a point—creating meaning from the unity from which the universe itself sprung. This would also explain the holographic-like qualities of brains. Beyond time and space is ultimate unity--which contained the speck out of infinite possibility that became our universe (see my other 3 papers). Evolution operates by selecting out of possibility that which makes our existence here and now possible—just like all those amazing numbers, events, etc. in anthropic cosmology theories. DNA would form a complete thread of an umbilicus back to our original ancestors, and forward to omniscience and godhood (the real “Uberman” intimated by Neitzsche (Nietzsche, 1969), or Tielhard de Chardin’s Omega Point (De Chardin, 1959)). Causality and time actually are illusions of the time-constriction point of consciousness inside the mirrored bubble of space-time we swim around in from this view.

Repeating themes exist at different levels that humans pay attention to easily. Like repeating fractal forms, this is what we see in the organization of matter at all levels. For example, time and shapes exist in all our perceptions, and therefore is probably built into the temporal characteristics and functioning of neurons. Also, Inertia exists at all levels of matter and must somehow be related to the functioning of all relevant neurons—we know that a massive object will continue moving through obstacles. Matter is organized at all levels. Groups of people act like a larger brain in their organized functioning. Many other more subtle similarities exist in the functioning of various things, categories, and people in the world. It is useful to think of these organizing principles as the "genetic code of the universe" out of which everything is built—part of the “points” binding everything together. Perhaps our genes are the repository of the constrictions in infinite possibility (Which our particular universe seems to be—see Linde, 1994 for some theoretical roots to this idea) inherent in absolute unity beyond time and space. The implications of consciousness research must not be underestimated.

These types of repeating organizing principles enable analogy and metaphor, and even our spoken language and symbols. Language may be possible because it is constructed using the same neural equipment with which we construct the natural world—which has naturally symbolic properties. The brain is a meaning machine. Meaning drives evolution—which is speeded up by our learning ability. Biological drives may have given the seeds for one aspect of this theory--biological drives underlying our behaviors may provide the "base metaphors" upon which language, behaviors, and perception get their original organization and meaning which we build on and can learn to control—transcend by finding a larger unity or meaning behind them. A review of the literature supporting these assertions is beyond the scope of this paper (see my other three 2001 papers), but these concepts illustrate types of organizing principles for behavior and brain theory. How are the speech areas of the brain connected to our hands or mouths when we write or speak? Why do we have trouble sometimes finding words for what we clearly see? Glial cells may hold the answer.

Recent evidence has shown glial cells to be able to control the information functioning of hippocampal CA1 layer neurons (Keyser and Pellmar, 1994), to promote recovery of learned behavior after brain injury (Kesslak, Nieto-Sampedro, Globus, and Cotman, 1990), and to respond to the release of neurotransmitters in various ways (Kim, Rioult, and Cornell-Bell, 1994; Chiu and Kriegler, 1994). Norepinephrine beta receptors have been linked primarily to glial cells rather than neurons in the brain (Shao and Sutin, 1992). Manipulations of these receptors have psychological effects. Chemicals that interact with glial cells, such as norepinephrine, have been shown to effect plasticity in brain tissue (Bear and singer, 1986). These chemicals may have their effects through glial cells (Romer, 1993; Shao and Mcarthy, 1994). Astrocytes (a type of glial cell) are extremely plastic and can divide, migrate to new areas, and grow. Since response plasticity and perceptual plasticity are linked to consciousness, this is also general evidence that astrocytes may provide a powerful organizing force in the brain if not a large part of the "ghost in the machine". Consciousness is the force of evolution looking for information to build and advance iself. Glial cells may have assumed this role in brains.

This idea of consciousness being an evolutionary and creative force is hard to imagine if you do not accept that the causal flow of time is an illusion (see 2 of my other papers for direct evidence of this). Why haven’t any species developed some extreme defense, toxin, weapon that wipes out all life except for itself? Why aren’t there super poisonous, fast, birds for example? Why did the dinosaurs die? All of it can be explained by some state of mankind necessary to the creation of life itself on earth reaching back and selecting out it’s own developmental path--from anthropic cosmology (see Gribbin and Rees, 1989), to the present day. Various religious ideas, such as a future “heaven on earth” or the “Omega Point” (De Chardin, 1959) may simply consist in the collective realization of this—not some artificial, overarching, future social or political scheme. Past civilizations, geniuses, religious figures, and cultures may be an echo of the future—echoed through and back in time otherwise we would not exist—like ripples in a pond from a mass dropped in the center. The instructions handed down through time by “God” sitting at the end of time, or at least the end of the past ages and their ways. This would explain a lot—danger of sins (non-transcendance), religions, all of it. This would tie completely together a lot of religions and their concepts—or the fact that we have religion at all--all this from the study of glial cells and consciousness. Of course, then science and religion are actually two sides of the same thing—two directions of looking at the same thing.

Evidence has also been gathered that glial cells can participate in the information transfer in neurons by increasing or decreasing sensitivity to excitatory or inhibitory inputs from other neurons by a release of calcium ions that move through the tissue in a radial wave (Newman and Zahs, 1998). Most recently for this theory is evidence from Ben Barres lab at Stanford (Ullian E.M., et al. 2001) They found that astrocytes exert a powerful influence on communication between neurons by regulating both the efficacy of synaptic transmission, and even the numbers of synapses themselves. Also, as an anecdotal aside, studies of Einsteins brain have shown that he had about 10 times as many glial cells in his parietal lobes as many other normal brains. That fits well with the theories here too because more glial cells should follow from more attention or consciousness. The parietal lobes are highly involved in higher functions such as reading comprehension and spatial imagination. They have also been linked experimentally to lucid dreaming (Holtzinger, 2000). Beyond the great potential for understanding ourselves, investigations into the functioning of glial cells may lead to cures for diseases such as Alzheimers disease or schizophrenia (Romer, 1993; Hertz, 1992). Glial cells definitely may be the key here to really understanding these things. If not the glial cells working beyond the time and space of the brain, then something else beyond time and space must be at work. There is no other way to explain the binding problem, and meaning. Beyond time, Via the DNA from a single ancestor, all life is one big organism—each species is a limb on the same body—if you ignore death and focus on the unbroken line of DNA. Any species, or set of species, may be changed or controlled or as one through time this way—based on consciousness, the striving toward real unity of life. Glial cells may be the source of consciousness in brains interacting across time—the missing dark matter of minds.

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