Proposed Cortical “Shutter” Mechanism in Cinematographic Perception

Brains are open thermodynamic systems, continually dissipating meta-bolic energy in forming cinematographic spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity. In this report patterns of cortical oscillations are described as ‘dissipative structures’ formed near an operating point at criticality far from equilibrium. Around that point exists a small-signal, near-linear range in which pairs of impulse responses superpose. Piece-wise linearization extends analysis into nonlinear ranges. Resulting root loci are interpreted as projections from a phase plane, in which the three phase boundaries are graphed in the coordinates of rate of change in a dynamic order parameter (negentropy) on the ordinate analogous to static pressure vs. rate of energy dissipation (power) analogous to static temperature on the abscissa. The graph displays the neural mechanism that implements phase transitions and enables the limbic system to repeat the action-perception cycle at 3–7 Hz. The mechanism is null spikes (‘vortices’) in Rayleigh noise in background electrocorticogram (ECoG) that serve as a shutter by triggering phase transitions.