Columnar Electromagnetic Influences on Short-Term Memory at Multiple Scales

Abstract

For several decades the stated Holy Grail of chemical, biological and biophysical research into neocortical information processing has been to reduce such neocortical phenomena into specific bottom-up molecular and smaller-scale processes. Over the past three decades, with regard to short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) phenomena, which themselves are likely components of other phenomena like attention and consciousness, a statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions (SMNI) approach has yielded specific details of STM capacity, duration and stability not present in molecular approaches, but it is clear that most molecular approaches consider it inevitable that their reductionist approaches at molecular and possibly even quantum scales will yet prove to be causal explanations of such phenomena. The SMNI approach is a bottom-up aggregation from synaptic scales to columnar and regional scales of neocortex, and has been merged with larger non-invasive EEG scales with other colleagues – all at scales much coarser than molecular scales. As with many Crusades for some truths, other truths can be trampled. It is proposed that an SMNI vector potential (SMNI-VP) constructed from magnetic fields induced by neuronal electrical firings, at thresholds of collective minicolumnar activity with laminar specification, can give rise to causal top-down mechanisms that effect molecular excitatory and inhibitory processes in STM and LTM. A specific example might be causal influences on momentum $\mathbf{p}$ of Ca$^{2 }$ ions by the SMNI-VP $\mathbf{A}$, as calculated by the canonical momentum $\mathbf{q}$, $\mathbf{q} = \mathbf{p} - e \mathbf{A}$, where $e$ is the electron coulomb charge and $c$ is the speed of light, which may be applied either classically or quantum-mechanically. Such a smoking gun for top-down effects awaits forensic in vivo experimental verification, requiring appreciating the necessity and due diligence of including true multiple-scale interactions across orders of magnitude in the complex neocortical environment.