The Goo That Binds Us: How Field Resonance Solves Neuroscience's Binding and Criticality Problems

Tam Hunt^*

• University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States

The binding problem represents one of neuroscience's most persistent challenges: how do distributed neural processes create unified conscious experience? This paper argues that the problem emerges from neuroscience's "prickly" bias toward discrete, computational approaches and dissolves when we embrace "gooey" electromagnetic field perspectives. Drawing on Alan Watts' philosophical dichotomy between "prickles" (precise, chopped-up particles) and "goo" (softer, continuous waves), I demonstrate how the EM field hypothesis (EFH) provides a natural solution to both spatial and temporal binding through cross-frequency coupling and field resonance mechanisms. New evidence from EEG research reveals that electromagnetic fields can entrain neural spike timing at thresholds as low as 0.74 mV/mm, establishing causal field-to-neuron communication. The 5,000-fold speed advantage of ephaptic field propagation (50 km/s vs 10-100 m/s for spikes) scales to a potential 125 billion-fold information density advantage (5,000 to the third power), enabling the rapid integration necessary for unified consciousness. The volumetric propagation of electromagnetic fields naturally generates the power-law scaling and critical avalanche dynamics observed across neural systems, eliminating the need for precisely tuned synapdtic parameters that would be evolutionarily unstable. The implications extend beyond solving a technical problem to recognizing that cognition and consciousness are probably more gooey than prickly---not made of discrete computational events but continuous electromagnetic field dynamics produced by the brain and body.