Dynamics - What If Cognition Depends on Analog Computation?

When we say that the brain “processes information,” a familiar metaphor appears almost immediately:

a computer.

Inputs. Outputs. Circuits. Memory. Calculation.

This metaphor has been extraordinarily productive for neuroscience and cognitive science. But perhaps it has also created a conceptual local optimum: we began looking for something in the brain that resembles too closely the digital machines we ourselves constructed.

In 2026, Earl K. Miller, Scott L. Brincat, and Jefferson E. Roy of MIT proposed another possibility in Analog Cognition and Consciousness. They suggest that cognition and consciousness may depend on bidirectional interactions between neuronal spiking and rhythmic electric fields — brain waves. These waves would not merely be consequences of neural activity: they could participate in computation itself by modulating excitability, routing signals, and rapidly reorganizing which neuronal populations participate in a particular task.

The authors do not claim to have proven a complete theory of consciousness.

They propose a hypothesis to be experimentally tested.

And perhaps this is precisely where one of the most interesting conceptual convergences appears with an idea BrainLatam has been developing:

Consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism produced.

The two proposals are not the same.

Miller and colleagues primarily discuss cortical dynamics and analog computation.

BrainLatam extends the question to the Body-Territory.

But both allow us to move away from imagining consciousness as a thing and ask whether it depends on dynamics.

Matter may not be merely where computation happens

In digital computers, we continuously constrain matter to produce discrete and reproducible states.

In an organism, some physical properties may themselves be part of the operation.

Phase.

Frequency.

Amplitude.

Propagation.

Interference.

Membrane potentials.

Chemical gradients.

Tensions.

In Miller’s proposal, brain waves may influence neuronal excitability at the mesoscale and organize neuronal populations into flexible, context-dependent dynamics.

This resonates with Alfredo Pereira Jr.’s Triple-Aspect Monism, frequently discussed by BrainLatam: matter/energy, informational organization, and experience do not necessarily need to be treated as three independent worlds, but as aspects of one reality.

The question therefore changes:

what if matter is not merely the support for information?

What if the way matter moves already participates in processing?

The senses are not independent cables

Here we need to abandon another simple image: several senses sending independent data to a central processor that later combines them.

In the BrainLatam hypothesis, the senses can be understood as levels of activation within a single configuration.

Every sense qualifies every other sense.

When we say that we are “seeing,” vision may have greater functional weight at that moment, but hearing, smell, interoception, proprioception, balance, temperature, nociception, and other sensory levels have not disappeared.

A sound can modify visual perception.

An image can alter what we hear.

An odor can qualify taste.

Body position changes what can be perceived.

Interoceptive state can alter the weight of a threatening sound.

The literature on multisensory integration likewise shows that sensory modalities interact at multiple stages and that attention and multisensory integration exert bidirectional influences.

So perhaps it is insufficient to think:

vision + hearing + smell + touch = perception.

The BrainLatam proposal is more dynamic:

levels of activation continuously qualify one another and produce the perceptual configuration of the Body-Territory at that moment.

Attention does not create this configuration

This point is central to 5D Consciousness.

Attention does not need to inaugurate what it later highlights.

A difference may already be materially transduced, modifying excitability, synchronization, posture, respiration, and metabolism without occupying the attentional foreground.

When Attention turns toward it, it may increase its functional weight.

This does not simply mean “more electricity.”

Attention may increase gain, alter synchronization, change temporal precision, and reorganize competition among representations.

In BrainLatam language:

Attention does not switch on something that was off. It amplifies relationships within a Body-Territory that was already happening.

Pain was already changing the one who would perceive the pain

Pain may be the most intuitive example.

Imagine someone working while back pain gradually begins.

For several minutes, the person remains focused on the task.

The pain has not yet dominated Attention.

But this does not mean that no processing is occurring.

Nociceptive activity, muscle tension, posture, autonomic activity, interoception, memory, and possibilities for movement may already be changing.

We also know that Attention can significantly modulate pain experience without this implying that Attention creates nociceptive processing from nothing.

When the person finally thinks:

“I am in pain,”

Attention does not encounter a neutral Body waiting for pain.

It encounters a Body-Territory that has already been modified by it.

We can therefore formulate:

the “self-in-pain” began to be configured before pain occupied the attentional foreground.

This does not mean confusing nociception with conscious pain.

It means recognizing that material processes participating in the experience may begin before explicit attentional prominence.

Ca²⁺: when activation level is also matter

“Activation level” does not need to remain a psychological metaphor.

In neurons, Ca²⁺ is a fundamental messenger. Its entry in response to synaptic activity or action potentials participates in neurotransmitter release, ion-channel modulation, synaptic plasticity, and activation of cellular processes.

These signals can be extremely local.

A single dendritic spine can display its own Ca²⁺ dynamics, meaning that a synaptic encounter can materially modify cellular conditions that will influence future encounters.

There are also Ca²⁺ waves in astrocytes, involving communication through gap junctions and extracellular signaling, coordinating groups of cells and interacting with neurons, synapses, and vasculature.

This does not allow us to say:

“more sensory activation = more Ca²⁺.”

That would be simplistic.

But it does allow us to say that levels of sensory and attentional activity participate in continuous electrochemical conditions in which Ca²⁺ is an important mediator.

Thus:

the encounter materially changes the conditions of the next encounter.

ON, OFF, and localization: difference before meaning

A small example makes this concrete.

In the retina, ON and OFF pathways begin separating increases and decreases in luminance from early stages of visual processing. They participate in coding contrast and different aspects of a scene before there is a “finished image” waiting for interpretation.

Something equally interesting occurs in hearing.

To localize sounds, the auditory system uses extremely small differences in timing and intensity between the two ears. Specialized circuits involving excitation and inhibition participate in transforming these physical differences into spatially relevant information.

Before we know what was said, the Body may already be processing where the sound came from.

The point is not that there is a single “location neuron.”

Almost the opposite:

location emerges from relationships among levels of activity.

This fits strongly with an analog logic.

The system does not need to first receive a symbol called “left.”

It can transform continuous differences in time, intensity, excitation, and inhibition into a spatially relevant configuration.

Perhaps there is no biological CPU

Another danger of the computational metaphor is imagining a central processor.

But organisms are full of distributed systems.

Astrocytes communicate.

Ca²⁺ waves propagate states.

Immune cells respond locally to chemical signals and to the behavior of other cells. There is even literature discussing mechanisms analogous to quorum sensing in immune populations, where collective responses depend on cell density and intercellular signaling.

This does not mean that leukocytes “think.”

Nor does it mean that a calcium wave is conscious.

It means something more important:

life is capable of producing coordination without concentrating all causality in a single center.

So perhaps the question should not be:

where is the processor?

But rather:

how do multiple local dynamics produce a global configuration capable of changing what the organism will be able to perceive and do next?

5D Consciousness: movement that perceives itself as Being

This is where Miller’s proposal meets our hypothesis — without validating it.

Miller, Brincat, and Roy propose that brain waves may participate in computation itself and contribute to coherent cognitive states.

BrainLatam asks whether these waves are only one part of a much larger dynamic.

Respiration.

CO₂.

pH.

Blood flow.

Ca²⁺.

Spikes.

Electric fields.

Muscle tension.

Visceral movement.

Proprioception.

Interoception.

Pain.

Sound.

Light.

Smell.

Memory.

Territory.

All of this happens within the same organism.

All of it can modify, at different scales, the conditions under which the next stimulus will be encountered.

Within Triple-Aspect Monism, we do not need to imagine first a physical body, then information, and finally a consciousness observing both.

We can ask whether the event itself simultaneously possesses materiality, organization, and experience.

Perhaps this is the sense in which our formulation gains precision:

Consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism produced.

We are not saying that any oscillation is conscious.

Nor that every analog computer has experience.

Computing is not the same as feeling.

Feeling is not necessarily the same as perceiving oneself as Being.

But if consciousness depends on a dynamic material configuration, its unity may not need to come from a center.

It may emerge from sufficient coordination within a distributed Body.

Miller asks whether the brain can compute through its own waves.

BrainLatam can extend the question:

what if the entire Body-Territory is continuously transforming differences into states that modify what can be perceived, evaluated, and done next?

Perhaps thinking is not merely processing data.

Perhaps it is producing movement capable of transforming the next encounter.

And perhaps the most interesting question is no longer:

where is consciousness?

but:

what material movement, within a particular Body-Territory, can come to perceive itself as Being?

References

Miller, E. K., Brincat, S. L., & Roy, J. E. (2026). Analog Cognition and Consciousness. The Journal of Neuroscience, 46(33), e0711262026. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0711-26.2026
Proposes that cognition and consciousness may depend on bidirectional interactions between spiking activity and brain waves, enabling flexible organization and large-scale analog computation.

Pereira Jr., A. — Triple-Aspect Monism, as discussed in BrainLatam publications.
Offers a conceptual bridge between materiality, informational organization, and experience without treating them as independent substances.

Kim, Y. J., & Lee, S.-H. (2026). Attentional modulation of multisensory integration across the cortical hierarchy. Frontiers in Neural Circuits, 20. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2026.1920358
Shows that Attention and multisensory integration depend on distributed mechanisms including gain modulation, phase, integration, and connectivity.

Higley, M. J., & Sabatini, B. L. — work on Ca²⁺ signaling in dendritic spines and dendrites.
Shows how Ca²⁺ links synaptic activity to local cellular changes and plasticity, providing a material example of state-dependent processing.

Scemes, E., & Giaume, C. (2006). Astrocyte calcium waves: what they are and what they do. Glia, 54(7), 716–725. https://doi.org/10.1002/glia.20374
Describes Ca²⁺ waves as a form of excitability and communication in astrocytic networks, expanding the discussion of distributed neural organization.

Kondo, M., et al. (2023). On and off signaling pathways in the retina and the visual system.
Reviews how ON and OFF pathways separate contrast from early stages of vision, illustrating parallel and relational processing before a complete visual representation.

Burger, R. M., Fukui, I., Ohmori, H., & Rubel, E. W. (2011). Inhibition in the balance: binaurally coupled inhibitory feedback in sound localization circuitry.
Shows how temporal differences and excitatory/inhibitory relationships participate in auditory localization on extremely fast timescales.

Antonioli, L., Blandizzi, C., Pacher, P., Guilliams, M., & Haskó, G. (2018). Quorum sensing in the immune system. Nature Reviews Immunology, 18, 537–538.
Discusses how immune-cell populations can coordinate collective responses through communication- and density-dependent mechanisms, offering an example of distributed biological organization.