Holographic Processing in Neural and Psychosocial Systems

With his application of the physics of image and information processing in research on the brain, the late, world-renowned neuropsychologist, Karl Pribram, illuminated the inner workings of neural processes with his holographic approach. Pribram shows that both Gabor processing and Fourier processing are involved in processing in the neural microstructure, and that memory/retrieval, sensory perception, and motor function, can all be understood in the terms of holographic processing, which is extended, here, to purposeful action. In collaborative work, Bradley and Pribram applied Gabor processing to show how social communication in groups, via the field of affective attachment among members, distributes quantized holographic-like units of information about collective order to generate functionally effective patterns of organization. In the fifteen or more years since this striking resemblance between holography and certain brain/behavioral processes was noted, much evidence has accumulated to show that what began as a metaphorical simile has been developed into a precise neurological model.Such a theory is thoroughly grounded in the structures and functions of the microanatomical connectivity of the nervous system and provides a mathematically sophisticated formalism of the relationship between anatomy and memory structure.… There is little remaining doubt that some brain processes are characterized by holonomic transformations that result in algebraic isomorphisms between image/object on the one hand and the holographic transform domain on the other Karl H. Pribram [1,2].“Hidden behind the discrete and independent objects of the sense world is an entangled realm [quantum reality] in which the simple notions of identity and locality no longer apply.” [3]…. and at the scale in which we navigate our [4-D spacetime] world, is a hidden holographic universe in which are embedded the objects we perceive with our senses and actions. The enfolded realm spans all scales of inquiry from cosmic through brain processing to quantum fields Karl H. Pribram [4].ProloguePsychologist Karl Lashley was the late, world-renowned neuropsychologist Karl Pribram’s mentor. Lashley conducted a lifetime of experiments teaching rats to learn a maze after which he surgically removed a portion of the visual cortex, in searching for the engram (the location of the memory image of the maze path). Despite surgical excision of almost all the visual cortex, the rats could still find their way through the maze! This left Lashley exasperated, a result for which he had no answer. After learning about Gabor’s discovery of holographic organization, Pribram realized that the principle of distributed organization of information—namely, that information about an object (as a whole) is recorded at all points and locations throughout a field by the movement of energy—appeared to offer a way of explaining Lashley’s paradoxical result. To resolve the paradox, Pribram had to venture deeply into the principles of holography—viz, the physics of image and information processing.