Biology and Medicine

Abstract

Neural Tissues Filter Electromagnetic Fields: Investigating Regional Processing of Induced Current in Ex vivo Brain Specimens

Nicolas Rouleau and Michael A Persinger

As has been demonstrated experimentally, the living brain responds to pulsatile electromagnetic fields. Our aim was to investigate the capacities of ex vivo neural tissue to process and filter induced current generated by naturally occurring and laboratory-controlled electromagnetic fields. Microvolt potentials within the chemically fixed postmortem brains were collected throughout the field exposures. During strong geomagnetic storms there was a significant increase in power spectra within the 7.5 Hz to 14 Hz range within the right but not the left parahippocampal gyrus compared to days with relatively quiet geomagnetic activity. This finding indicated that ambient electromagnetic fluctuations from natural sources were processed differentially as a function of subsections of the postmortem tissue. Exposing a whole, fixed human brain to two physiologically patterned magnetic fields that have been associated with powerful subjective experiences reported by hundreds of human volunteers in the laboratory setting elicited increased power within the 7.5 Hz to 20 Hz range. The effects required 10 to 20 s to emerge and were primarily represented within tissue subsections of the right amygdala and orbitofrontal gyri. Other fields such as simple sine-wave (20 Hz) patterns of comparable intensity (2 to 10 μT) did not elicit the same configuration of changes. The results indicate that neural tissues filter electromagnetic fields non-randomly.