Resonance Cascades and Critical Avalanches: A Field-Primary Theory of Brain Criticality

The brain's electromagnetic fields, not just synaptic firing, may be the primary medium for computation, cognition, and consciousness. Neural avalanches—activity cascades following power-law distributions that mark critical brain dynamics—propagate too rapidly to be explained by synaptic transmission alone. The authors propose that these avalanches spread through resonance cascades in the brain's EM fields, which form a nested hierarchy of oscillations. The neural substrate and its firing provide the energetic foundation, while neurotransmitter systems act as field-controlled energy distribution networks, tuning brain regions toward or away from a baseline critical state. This framework explains how 1/f noise emerges naturally from multi-scale field interactions at criticality, and suggests normal waking consciousness corresponds to an optimal balance of local and global field dynamics.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Neural avalanches—cascading patterns of activity that follow power-law distributions—are considered a hallmark of critical brain dynamics. However, current models relying solely on synaptic transmission cannot explain the rapid propagation speeds observed empirically. Here we propose that neural avalanches propagate through resonance cascades in the brain's electromagnetic (EM) fields, and more fundamentally, that these fields constitute the primary computational medium of the brain. Building on General Resonance Theory (Hunt & Schooler, 2019) and the “sprays and fields” approach recently proposed by Laukkonen, Friston and Chandaria, we sketch how field-mediated resonance creates the scale-free dynamics characteristic of criticality. We argue that rather than fields and synaptic mechanisms being co-equal, the neuroanatomical substrate, and the neural firing that it supports, serves primarily as an energetic foundation that produces a nested hierarchy of EM field oscillations that are, through their complicated interactions across many orders of frequency, the primary mechanism for cognition and consciousness. Crucially, this energetic substrate maintains itself at a critical state—poised between order and disorder—providing optimal computational capacity as needed and where it is needed in the brain. Neurotransmitter systems function as field-controlled energy distribution networks that can rapidly shift local brain regions away from this baseline criticality, either increasing energy/firing (supercritical) or decreasing it (subcritical) based on field computational demands. More specifically, neuromodulators—through their diffuse, persistent "sprays" via volume transmission—act as atmospheric power modulators that tune the energetic substrate up or down, throughout brain regions as needed, while the EM fields they support perform the primary computation of cognition and consciousness. Our mathematical framework reveals that 1/f noise emerges naturally from multi-scale field interactions when the system operates at criticality, and that normal waking consciousness corresponds to a critical resonance state where local and global field dynamics achieve optimal balance within a certain range. This field-primary hypothesis suggests a significant change to conventional neuroscience, but offers a more parsimonious explanation for rapid neural coordination, brain criticality, and the dynamics of cognition and consciousness.