HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Consciousness Research
This article is part of the Research TopicBridging Gaps in Understanding Consciousness: Multidisciplinary PerspectivesView all 11 articles
The Projective Wave Theory of Consciousness
Provisionally accepted
- Active Inference Institute Inc, Davis, United States
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Many theories of consciousness propose that consciousness arises from neural computation in the brain. All information in a neural computer is physically encoded, but consciousness contains un-encoded information about local space. The information required for decoding does not reside in the brain. So consciousness cannot arise from encoded neural information; but it could arise from un-encoded information, such as an analogue model of local 3-D space. This paper proposes that the mammalian brain holds an analogue model of 3-D space, as a wave excitation in the thalamus. The wave stores information in a Fourier transform of space, like a hologram. Neurons couple to the wave, and the wave is the source of consciousness. Such a wave has not been detected in the brain; but there are reasons why it has not yet been detected, and there are reasons for a wave to have evolved. There is indirect evidence for a wave in the mammalian thalamus, and in the central body of the insect brain. This paper is an initial conceptual outline of aIn the resulting projective wave theory of consciousness, in which phenomenal consciousness arises solely from the a wave excitation in the thalamus. Neuronal activity maintains the wave, but has no direct link to consciousness. The Such a theory is capable of agreeing agrees well with the spatial form of our conscious experience. It avoids the decoding problem of neural theories of consciousness, and has the potential for there is a positive Bayesian balance between the complexity of its assumptions and the data it fits; this is reason to believe investigate it further it. The theory would explains why consciousness evolved, and beit is falsifiable. Many details of the theory remain to be worked out.
Keywords: Analogue models, Bayesian balance, computational functionalism, Consciousness, encoding and decoding of information, Fourier Transform, insect central body, projective transform of space
Received: 28 Jul 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Worden. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Robert Peel Worden
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