Tamlyn (“Tam”) Hunt is a researcher at UC Santa Barbara’s METALAB where he studies consciousness and psychology. He has developed, with Prof. Jonathan Schooler and other collaborators, the General Resonance Theory of consciousness. He was recently lead editor of a Frontiers in Human Neuroscience research topic on electromagnetic field theories of consciousness. When he's not thinking about the nature of consciousness, Hunt is a green energy policy lawyer. His website is tam-hunt.com and he blogs at tamhunt.medium.com. 

Presenting: “Is Consciousness in the Field or in Neural Firing?”

Recent neuroscience findings suggest that the traditional "spike code" view of how brains work is at the least incomplete and maybe even wrong. Non-synaptic ("ephaptic field effects") information systems have been found to be causally relevant in the brain, and are far faster than synaptic firing in the transmission of information. Ephaptic field effects are based on various scales of electromagnetic fields produced by the brain and body. The General Resonance Theory (GRT) of consciousness, developed by Hunt and Schooler over the last decade, is an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness. Hunt's talk will flesh out the "field code" alternative to traditional neural firing and discuss how this exciting new science affects GRT and our understanding of how cognition and consciousness work.