As chiropractic continues to develop, some of the early hypotheses of why chiropractic works have changed.
As knowledge expands, we are better able to apply thera
peutic corrections with optimal effectiveness. Most of applied kinesiology has been developed in a clinical set
ting. The observation of body language, how the body reacts to different tests, and the subjective and objective improvement in health have been major factors in the development of AK. There is a constant effort to under
stand the mechanisms of examination and treatment methods and to apply current knowledge about physiol
ogy, anatomy, and the other sciences. There are some procedures that the current database of knowledge sim
ply cannot adequately explain, or the appropriate asso
ciation has not yet been made.
The hologram model of the nervous system and memory is an example of increasing knowledge that prom
ises to improve our understanding of how some of the
16
AK procedures work. Of primary importance is the at
tempt to explain the principles at work, i.e., develop al
ternate hypotheses and test them. As the hypotheses are tested, the strong will survive. Only by this method can a solid foundation be extended in this rapidly developing clinical science.
Understanding how the nervous system functions is an excellent example of the broadening scientific con
cepts. Even with the increased knowledge of recent years, much of the nervous system's function is yet to be dis
covered. One is reminded of the title of Restak's book, The Brain: The Last Frontier.87 Hubel, in an article writ
ten for the public,49 explains why brain research is slow, and he gives an overview of the extensive research that has been done to understand the brain's function. It has only been in recent years that man's knowledge has snow
balled at incredible rates. In
1510,
Copernicus pOinted out that the earth revolves on its axis daily and aroundthe sun annually, with profound effects on succeeding scientific endeavors. Galileo used the newly developed telescope and mathematics to support the Copernican theory, for which the church condemned him in 1616 and again in 1633 as being " . . . vehemently suspected of her
esy." Darwin, in 1856, demonstrated that man is related to all other living organisms. Einstein dramatically changed the path of research with his introduction of new concepts of time and space, mass and energy. Watson and Crick formulated the double helix molecular model of DNA to explain biological inheritance in physical and chemical terms. The last frontier of this scientific progres
sion is improved understanding of what made all these discoveries possible: the brain, its nervous system, and memory.
Hubel49 gives an overview of the extensive research conducted to understand the brain's function. He points out that the speed of research accelerated toward the end of the 19th century, and new techniques were developed during and after World War II that caused the study of neurobiology to become one of the most active branches in all science. Even with all this activity, brain research is just beginning.
Most neurobiologic research has been directed to
ward understanding the neuronal pathways, mapping activities of the brain,74 and understanding transmission.
The difficulty in doing this research can be appreciated when one considers there are approximately one hundred billion nerve cells in man's three-pound brain. The neu
rons and their adjacent branches are so intertwined and dense that the unstained tissue, when viewed through an optical microscope, is only a dense and useless smear.
Although there has been a great effort in mapping and understanding the connections of structures within the brain, it is quite a different thing from understanding the structure's physiology. Most of the understanding is at the receptor or input area of the nervous system and at the output section, such as motor neurons for muscle control. Far less is known about the workings of regions in between, which make up most of the nervous system.49 There is a tendency to liken the central nervous system - especially the brain - to a modern-day com
puter.1I9 A computer is a machine, nothing more.49 A computer's memory is clean, crisp, clear, and linear; the human nervous system is not. Pietsch83 states, "Brains and computers operate on fundamentally different prin
ciples, and they mimic each other only when the task is trivial." The computer deals with input, the central pro
cessing unit (CPU), and output. Very simply stated, in
put to a computer is from a device that gives it information, such as typing at the keyboard. The infor
mation goes to the CPU, which is analogous to the sen
sory nervous system sending information to the central nervous system. Output is the movement of information that has been processed or stored in the computer so it can be viewed on a device, such as a monitor, or printed.
Motor activity provides an example of output by the
ner-vous system activating muscles, organs, and glands.
The analogy of the nervous system to a computer is acceptable as long as one is cognizant that the ner
vous system, in reality, does not function in the clean, crisp, clear, linear manner of a computer. Gevins et al. 25 point out that the human brain, unlike a fixed pro
grammed computer, dynamically "programs" areas of the brain in anticipation of the need to process certain types of information. It has the ability to modify its processing to take certain types of action, depending upon the need.
More is being learned about the dense, complex action taking place between input and output. The findings are consistent with numerous areas of the central nervous system having to function together for the body to prop
erly perform certain actions. Referring to the brain's dy
namic anticipatory programs, they state, "When these preparatory sets are incomplete or incorrect, subsequent performance is likely to be inaccurate."
The most attractive model of the nervous system today is the hologram theory. It gives the basic principles upon which memory is established. The principles of the hologram theory appear to spread throughout the body, relating with input (the sensory system) , central nervous system, and output (functions of the body), similar to the way Einstein demonstrated the same relative principle in both the very small atom and the universe at large.
Before discussing the hologram theory, let's look at the wide range of memory usage and, in some cases, the location of memory. It has been established that memory is present in the simplest form of organisms, from proto
zoa, paramecia, bacteria, and roaches, becoming more complex on up to man.83
Bacteria (salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli) have a rudimentary memory that enables them to direct migration in their environment toward increasing concentrations of an attractant and away from increas
ing concentrations of a repellent. Koshland62 uses the term
"bacterial memory" not as being the long-term memory in the order of higher species, but real and useful to a bacterium, the same as memory is to humans in their survival. The memory of a bacterium enables it to direct its movement in a direction that aids in its survival. The effective memory span is calculated to be approximately the time it takes for a bacterium to swim twenty to one hundred body lengths. This gives the ability to detect concentrations of one part in 102 to one part in 103.
Pietsch83 helps in visualizing this concentration by giving it the rough equivalence of distinguishing a teaspoon of Beaujolais in a bathtub of gin, a " . . .formidable analytic problem," as Koshland62 states.
This evidence of bacterial rudimentary mind can be explained by the hologramic theory, according to Pietsch.83 An example of the hologramic theory active in lower life is given by Adler and Tso,l who investigated the movement of bacteria when presented simultaneously with an attractant and a repellent. When the attractant was higher, the E. coli's flagella had counterclockwise rotation
to move toward the substance. When the repellent was stronger, the flagella moved in a clockwise direction.
Pietsch83 explains, "In terms of hologramic theory in its simplest form, the two opposite reactions are 180°, or pi, out of phase. By shifting from random locomotion to movement relative to a stimulus, the organism would be shifting from random phase variations in its flagella to the equivalence of harmonic motion, as if from cacophony to melody. " This shift in phase is a key factor of hologramic theory, which will be explained later.
With establishing memory in lower life forms comes the question, "Can it be used to make decisions?" Bac
teria determining what movement in the environment is necessary for survival show an example of intelligence.
As life forms become more complex, learning and deci
sion-making improve.
Eisenstein18 discusses the early work of Day and Bently
(1911)
wherein they demonstrated that paramecia are able to learn and remember. They placed a para
mecium in a capillary tube with a diameter less than the animal's length. It swam the length of the tube and then, reaching the end, could only turn around by getting stuck, wriggling, bobbing, and - finally by accident - revers
ing direction. After numerous repetitions of the course, the animal learned the moves necessary to make an effi
cient turn. Pietsch83 discusses Gelber's further evidence of the learning ability of the paramecium by condition
ing it to go for food with the same basic approach Pavlov used in conditioning dogs to salivate at the ring of a bell.
Other evidence that the paramecium can learn is that it takes non-foods, such as cramine particles (a staining agent) , but soon "learns" to stop this; the change in be
havior persists for some days. 76
Pietsch83 observed the ability of a protozoan to learn and remember its home environment so that it could re
turn when separated briefly from it. When the protozoan would swim back to its apparent "home" but miss it, it would take a few pokes at a foreign strand and then test various areas until it found its original location. The for
eign strands were not rejected because they were unin
habitable, since other protozoa were happily living there.
Many lower life forms have memory and decision
making ability without a brain, as such. We tend to think of higher life forms having memory and decision-making residing in the brain. To test this, Horridge,47 in what has become known as the Horridge preparation, beheaded an insect suspended directly above a salt solution. With an electrical apparatus, the insect received a shock every time the leg relaxed and gravity pulled it down into the solution. The beheaded insect learned to keep the leg up by muscle contraction to avoid the shock. This experi
ment has been refined by Hoyle48 making direct record
ings from the specific nerves. He has found that
" . . . debrained animals learned better than intact ones."
After discussing the ability of decapitated insects to learn in the spinal cord and brainstem without the use of the brain, Pietsch states, " . . . the fact is that evidence of mind
18
exists in some very strange places. Brain (in the sense of what we house inside our crania) is not a sine qua non condition of mind."
Various conditioning paradigms are applied to labo
ratory animals with portions of the brain removed to determine where learning takes place. The eye-blink re
flex, conditioned with an auditory stimulus and a brief shock to the eyelid, has been demonstrated in a decer
ebrate cat in which the complete lower brainstem was transsectioned. The conditioning took place slower than in an intact animal, but it does demonstrate that decer
ebrate cats can learn the conditioned response.78 Finding specific memory locations has been a prob
lem in neurobiology. Karl Lashley's experimenffi64 showed the brain to be put together with exquisite anatomical precision, but they also showed that engrams and memory traces could not be localized. He found that a rat could continue to navigate a pre-learned maze with only insig
nificant errors when over
50%
of its cortex was removed.The confusing aspect, in correlation with the anatomical precision of the brain, is that it did not matter which part of the cortex was removed, but how much of it. Karl Pribram, an associate of Lashley,79 has suggested a model for brain and nervous system function based on the holo
gram.SS•86 The hologram model explains how the nervous system acts in order and pattern that is essential for life.
The hologram was discovered by Nobel laureate Dennis Gabor in
1947.
Based on his principles, threedimensional photography came into existence. The prin
ciples of hologram photography have been applied to many other aspects in science, providing a broader un
derstanding and opening the door for many new discov
eries. Gabor coined the word "hologram" from the Greek word "holos," meaning whole, to indicate that the holo
gram contains complete information about a wave. The term "holograph" means "written entirely in one's own hand." 1l2 Both hologram and holograph are used almost interchangeably in the hologram literature. Hologram will be used here except when quoting a source or discussing someone's work.
The hologram model of the brain and nervous sys
tem explains much that was previously enigmatic. A brief review of the discovery of the hologram, how a photo
graphic hologram is made, and the hologram's general application in science and industry is appropriate here to better understand its application to the nervous system.
A
B
1 -1 0. A -coherent, and B -incoherent light waves.
A light wave, as well as other types of waves, con
tains both intensity and phase. (figure
1-10)
A standard photograph records only intensity and misses the phase, which carries the depth information.Standard photography is simple compared to ho
lography. A regular camera uses a lens system to pick up light waves reflected off a subject. The waves are focused as an image, recording only the brightness and darkness of the reflected waves; thus only two dimensions are re
corded because the important aspect of depth - the third dimension - is carried in the phase of the light waves, which is not recorded.17
1 -1 1 . Ordinary photography.
Standard photography records only the intensity of disturbed waves. It is a record made up of a mosaic of points of varying intensities. Westlake114 states, "In some rough sense it can be said that the intensity (or ampli
tude squared) constitutes half of the information and that the phase differences constitute the 'other half' of the information. (In this sense normal photography should be re-named 'halfography.' ) "
Ordinary light - the light that makes a standard photograph - is incoherent. This type of light spreads as it travels from its source, becoming less intense with increasing distance. This is called the law of the square.
Coherent light does not spread, and travels a great dis
tance with little loss. Coherent light is a beam of photons that have the same frequency phase and direction. This does not occur anywhere in nature. If coherent light came from the sun, we would be sizzled by it.
A flashlight and a laser are examples of incoherent and coherent light waves, respectively.
Gabor4 acknowledges that before his own work Fritz Zemike had concluded that to record all the information - both the intensity and phase - of a wave, it would be necessary to record two beams from the same source.
In photography, the beam directly reflected from the sub
ject being photographed is called the object beam. It is this beam that carries the intensities that are recorded to make an ordinary photograph. The second beam is the reference beam, which is missed in ordinary photogra
phy. In Gabor's words, "The essential new step was the discovery of the principle of reconstruction which came to my mind one day at Easter,
1947."
Since Gabor's area of interest was in improving the electron microscope to the point where individual atoms could be seen with it, it is ironic to read his report of holography twenty-five years after its discovery. "So for the time being one must admit the strange fact that holography was a success in all applications except in the one for which it was invented:
for electron holography. "24 Since then Stroke, one of the current leaders in holography, has developed an electron microscope technique with which he has been able to take blurred, illegible electron micrographs and reconstruct them to view a virus resembling the double helix struc
ture of the DNA molecule.17
When a standard photograph is torn in half, the picture separates; when each piece is observed, half of the picture is missing. In a hologram, since the entire in
formation is recorded over the whole picture, tearing it in half produces two complete (only smaller) pictures of the subject. One can continue tearing the pieces of the pic
ture apart and still have increased numbers of the com
plete picture; only the quality of the picture is reduced.
The hologram model of the brain explains why Lashley64 could cut out large portions of an animal's brain and have its learned tasks continue, regardless of the portion of brain removed. The important factor is how much of the brain is removed. The hologram model has redundancy of re
cording, but as quantity is removed, the quality is reduced;
however, the total information is not.
The source of coherent light is from a laser, which is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." The first working laser was built in
1960.
The advent of the laser opened the door for the continued development and improved understanding of the hologram.In
1963
Leith and Upatnieks69,70 made a major advancement in understanding the hologram by creating the first laser-produced hologram. They used special partially-coated mirrors to separate the laser light source into two beams. Diffusers were used to broaden the laser beam for larger holograms - an action that seemed to go against the requirement of a coherent light source. Re
gardless of the conventional reasons that it couldn't be done, they succeeded in bringing a new grasp to the un
developed hologram.
A hologram is produced by two beams from the same source interacting. This is done by splitting a laser's
19
1 -1 4. Tearing a standard photograph splits the image (information).
coherent beam, with a portion of it passing through a semi
transparent mirror and the other portion being deflected to create the second beam. One beam travels to the sub
ject and is called the object beam; the other beam is di
rected by way of mirrors to the film and is called the reference beam. When the object beam strikes the sub
ject, it rebounds at various angles so the photons are no longer orderly or in phase. When the disturbed waves
ject, it rebounds at various angles so the photons are no longer orderly or in phase. When the disturbed waves