The Holographic Universe Read Online Free PDF

often
feel eerily realistic cramps, pains, and tinglings in these phantom appendages,
but maybe what they are experiencing is the holographic memory of the limb that
is still recorded in the interference patterns in their brains.
    Experimental
Support for the Holographic Brain
    For Pribram the many
similarities between brains and holograms were tantalizing, but he knew his
theory didn't mean anything unless it was backed up by more solid evidence. One
researcher who provided such evidence was Indiana University biologist Paul
Pietsch. Intriguingly, Pietsch began as an ardent disbeliever in Pribram's
theory. He was especially skeptical of Pribram's claim that memories do not
possess any specific location in the brain.
    To prove Pribram wrong,
Pietsch devised a series of experiments, and as the test subjects of his
experiments he chose salamanders. In previous studies he had discovered that he
could remove the brain of a salamander without killing it, and although it
remained in a stupor as long as its brain was missing, its behavior completely
returned to normal as soon as its brain was restored.
    Pietsch reasoned that if
a salamander's feeding behavior is not confined to any specific location in the
brain, then it should not matter how its brain is positioned in its head. If it
did matter, Pribram's theory would be disproven. He then flip-flopped the left
and right hemispheres of a salamander's brain, but to his dismay, as soon as it
recovered, the salamander quickly resumed normal feeding.
    He took another
salamander and turned its brain upside down. When it recovered it, too, fed
normally. Growing increasingly frustrated, he decided to resort to more drastic
measures. In a series of over 700 operations he sliced, flipped, shuffled,
subtracted, and even minced the brains of his hapless subjects, but always when
he replaced what was left of their brains, their behavior returned to normal.
    These findings and
others turned Pietsch into a believer and attracted enough attention that his
research became the subject of a segment on the television show 60 Minutes. He writes about this experience as well as giving detailed accounts of his
experiments in his insightful book Shufflebrain.
    The Mathematical
Language of the Hologram
    While the theories that
enabled the development of the hologram were first formulated in 1947 by Dennis
Gabor (who later won a Nobel Prize for his efforts), in the late 1960s and
early 1970s Pribram's theory received even more persuasive experimental
support. When Gabor first conceived the idea of holography he wasn't thinking
about lasers. His goal was to improve the electron microscope, then a primitive
and imperfect device. His approach was a mathematical one, and the mathematics
he used was a type of calculus invented by an eighteenth-century Frenchman
named Jean B. J. Fourier.
    Roughly speaking what
Fourier developed was a mathematical way of converting any pattern, no matter
how complex, into a language of simple waves. He also showed how these wave
forms could be converted back into the original pattern. In other words, just
as a television camera converts an image into electromagnetic frequencies and a
television set converts those frequencies back into the original image, Fourier
showed how a similar process could be achieved mathematically. The equations he
developed to convert images into wave forms and back again are known as Fourier
transforms.
    Fourier transforms
enabled Gabor to convert a picture of an object into the blur of interference
patterns on a piece of holographic film. They also enabled him to devise a way
of converting those interference patterns back into an image of the original
object. In fact the special whole in every part of a hologram is one of the by-products
that occurs when an image or pattern is translated into the Fourier language of
wave forms.
    Throughout the late
1960s and early 1970s various researchers contacted Pribram and told him they
had uncovered evidence that