Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical

Was William James Right About Consciousness?

Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He wrote the award-winning essay, ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death,’ in which he argues that the transmissive theory of consciousness may actually be more consistent with emerging scientific insights than the dominant assumption that the brain generates consciousness.

In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Rouleau shares the main arguments from his essay, which touch upon his collaboration with Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the ‘God Helmet,’ and his work with Michael Levin on ‘mind blindness’—the idea that science may be searching for mind in too restricted a place by focusing almost exclusively on neurons.

More information on Dr. Nic Rouleau:
https://www.wlu.ca/academics/facultie… website: https://www.rouleaulab.com/ Further reading and scientific references discussed in this video: Rouleau’s BICS Essay: ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.’ https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/inde… Rouleau, N., Levin, M., et al. (2025) (Preprint; forthcoming in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society). Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments. https://tinyurl.com/439rrn8z Rouleau, N., & Levin, M. (2023). The Multiple Realizability of Sentience in Living Systems and Beyond. eNeuro, 10(11). https://tinyurl.com/2s4bdtmm Rouleau, N. & Cimino, N. (2022). A Transmissive Theory of Brain Function: Implications for Health, Disease, and Consciousness. NeuroSci, 3. https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4087/3/3/32 McCraty, R., et al. (2018). Long-term study of heart rate variability responses to changes in the solar and geomagnetic environment. https://tinyurl.com/254x3b9t Rouleau, N., & Persinger, M. A. (2016). Differential responsiveness of the right parahippocampal region to electrical stimulation in fixed human brains: Implications for historical surgical stimulation studies. Epilepsy & Behavior, 60181–186. https://tinyurl.com/uc5jbr Rajaram, M., & Mitra, S. (1981). Correlation between convulsive seizure and geomagnetic activity. Neuroscience Letters, 24, 187–191. https://tinyurl.com/3snrs4cs Chapters 0:00 Introduction 4:00 What Nic Rouleau would say to William James about his theory of transmissive consciousness 7:14 What do we know empirically about how electromagnetic fields influence our brains? 10:27 How scientifically rigorous are the empirical data on the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on brains? 11:35 On Nic’s mentor, Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the God Helmet 14:42 Research on post-mortem brain tissue 18:09 What mental states are influenced by magnetic fields? 18:58 Electromagnetic effects in dead vs. living brains 19:45 On Michael Levin and the paradigm shift due to bioelectricity 21:24 Influencing the thoughts of deceased people 25:33 Are biological forms stored in the Earth’s magnetic field? 30:21 Shielding brains from electromagnetic fields 33:12 Mind blindness: we only see 1% of the minds out there 38:55 What is the best way out of mind blindness? 41:06 Plant-based computation 42:00 The Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL) and what Nic is working on 43:23 Minds in a Petri dish 46:13 What counts as embodiment? 48:44 Phenomenal consciousness on different levels 53:06 What theories of consciousness can get us out of the behaviorist trap? 57:25 Nic’s award-winning essay on consciousness beyond death 1:00:55 Intermediary states of consciousness, the Bardo Thodol 1:04:46 Consciousness when the radio, the brain, is completely broken 1:06:35 Why exactly is electromagnetism a better explanation of consciousness beyond death than NDEs or OBEs? 1:11:58 How does the God Helmet work? 1:17:31 Which electromagnetic fields influence our consciousness and which ones don’t? 1:23:59 Can all of consciousness be stored in the Earth’s magnetic field? 1:27:08 Children with past-life memories: could electromagnetism play a role there? 1:29:51 How do quantum theories of consciousness relate to the work of Nic? 1:33:42 Do our brains connect electromagnetically with each other? 1:35:28 Nic on the hard problem of consciousness 1:38:00 Aren’t you just a materialist 2.0? 1:40:25 On the meaning of Nic’s work Copyright © 2026 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.
Personal website: https://www.rouleaulab.com/

Further reading and scientific references discussed in this video:

Rouleau’s BICS Essay: ‘An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.’ https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/inde…

Rouleau, N., Levin, M., et al. (2025) (Preprint; forthcoming in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society). Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments. https://tinyurl.com/439rrn8z.

Continue reading “Was William James Right About Consciousness?” | >

Spin Supercurrents in Superconducting Altermagnets

Materials from a new class of magnets could host permanent dissipationless spin currents when they enter a superconducting state.

Superconductors are famous for transporting electric charge with zero resistance. This ability underpins technologies such as MRI scanners, quantum computers, and sensitive magnetometers known as superconducting quantum interference devices. However, in the field of spintronics—which seeks to process information using electron spin rather than charge—achieving a similar long-range dissipationless transport has remained elusive. In ordinary metals, electron spins are highly susceptible to scattering and spin-orbit coupling, both of which cause spin currents to decay over short distances. Although research in superconducting spintronics based on ferromagnets has made progress [1, 2], ferromagnets produce stray magnetic fields that interfere with external circuit elements, and their internal magnetic fields tend to destroy superconductivity.

Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories

All the essential ingredients to make the DNA and RNA underpinning life on Earth have been discovered in samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu, scientists said Monday.

The discovery comes after these building blocks of life were detected on another asteroid called Bennu, suggesting they are abundant throughout the solar system.

One longstanding theory is that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying fundamental elements crashed into our planet long ago.

Next-gen interferometric diffusing wave spectroscopy achieves 20x signal boost in cerebral blood flow monitoring

Cerebral blood flow is essential for normal brain function and often perturbed in neurological disease. If one shines a source of coherent light on perfused tissue, the detected speckles, or “grains” of light fluctuate, or “dance,” at a rate proportional to blood flow in the volume sampled by the light. In brain tissue, this concept can be harnessed to measure the cerebral blood flow index (CBFi).

However, to date, implementations of this principle for noninvasive adult human brain monitoring—collectively known as diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS)—have achieved limited brain sensitivity. This is because the brain is 1–2 centimeters deep beneath the scalp and skull, meaning that the light must sample the superficial tissue before reaching the brain.

While the collection points can be moved further from the source to address this issue by improving sampling of the brain, this strategy requires many photon-counting channels to detect highly attenuated light far from the source. DCS becomes prohibitively expensive as the number of channels increases.

First-of-its-kind ion pump developed for seawater desalination, energy and biomedical applications

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Israel’s Tel Aviv University and other institutions have developed a first-of-its-kind membrane through which charged molecules pass using nothing more than a rapidly switching low-voltage signal. This “ratchet-based ion pump” has no moving parts and requires no chemical reactions.

The device opens the door to advances in water desalination, lithium ion harvesting from seawater, heavy-metal removal from drinking water, battery recycling and various biomedical applications. The team’s findings are outlined in a paper published recently in Nature Materials.

Frog-cell ‘neurobots’ grow self-organized nervous systems and alter gene activity

Biobots, whose growing line of variants started with xenobots, are fascinating tiny self-powered living robots built exclusively using frog embryonic cells. Originally developed in the laboratories of Wyss Institute Associate Faculty member and Tufts University Professor Michael Levin, Ph.D. and his collaborators at University of Vermont, biobots are remarkably motile, moving autonomously through aqueous environments.

Since then, the team has shed light on many exciting properties of biobots, including their ability for kinematic self-replication, and responding to sound stimuli.

Biobots can similarly be constructed using human cells in the form of anthrobots, which have the ability to heal neural wounds in vitro. Thus, a vision emerged that biobots, made out of patients’ own cells, could one day be deployed to repair spinal cord or retinal nerve damage, clear plaques from the arteries, locally deliver pro-regenerative drugs, and perform other vital tasks in the human body.

Stryker attack wiped tens of thousands of devices, no malware needed

Last week’s cyberattack on medical technology giant Stryker was limited to its internal Microsoft environment and remotely wiped tens of thousands of employee devices.

The organization says in an update on Sunday that all its medical devices are safe to use but electronic ordering systems remain offline, and customers must place orders manually through sales representatives.

Stryker emphasizes that the incident was not a ransomware attack and that the threat actor did not deploy any malware on its systems.

Plasma proteomic signature of frailty in 50,506 adults

Online now: Jia et al. delineate the most comprehensive plasma proteomic landscape of frailty to date and develop proteomic frailty scores that predict multiple diseases and respond to modifiable risk factors. They identify a biphasic pattern of frailty-related proteomic alterations across the lifespan, revealing critical windows that may inform targeted intervention programs.

Compound amino acid synergizes ceftazidime-avibactam to eradicate extracellular and facultative intracellular MDR pathogens

This study demonstrates that the FDA-approved drug 18AA potently resensitizes multidrug-resistant pathogens to ceftazidime-avibactam. It achieves this by activating two bacterial pathways, the inosine-CusS/R-CusC axis and the proton motive force, to promote antibiotic influx, offering a readily translatable strategy against formidable infections.

RNA barcodes fast-track brain connection mapping

“When engineering a computer, you need to know the circuitry of the central processing unit. If you don’t know how everything is wired together, you can’t understand its function, optimize it or fix it when something breaks. We are approaching the brain the same way,” said study leader Boxuan Zhao, a professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“Our technology enables simultaneous mapping of thousands of neural connections with single-synapse resolution —a capability that doesn’t exist in any current technology. It is directly applicable to understanding circuit dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases and could provide a platform for developing circuit-guided therapeutic interventions,” he said.

/* */