Information Fields

As previously remarked, Hopfield (1995) has proposed that in some cases the information content of a spike train is encoded in the phase of the impulses relative to some global or local clock, whereas the impulse em rate reflects pragmatic factors, such as the importance of the information. Phase-encoded fields of this sort are a special case of what may be termed information fields. An information field represents by virtue of its form, that is, the relative magnitude and disposition of its parts; its significance is a holistic property of the field. The overall magnitude of the field does not contribute to its meaning, but may reflect the strength of the signal and thereby influence the confidence or urgency with which it is used. Thus a physical field $\phi$ may be factored $\phi = m\nu$, where $m = \vert\vert \phi \vert\vert$ is its magnitude and $\nu$ is the (normalized) information field, representing its meaning. Information fields can be identified in the brain wherever we find information processing that depends on the form of a field, but not its absolute magnitude, or where the form is processed differently from the magnitude. Information is inherently idempotent: repeating a signal does not affect its semantics, although it may affect its reliability, urgency and other pragmatic factors; the idempotency of information was recognized by Boole in his Laws of Thought. Of course, this independence of magnitude also characteristic of the quantum field, which has led Bohm & Hiley (1993) to characterize this field as active information.