The Premordial Signal: Evidence for a Shared Coherence Substrate Beneath Neural Synchronization, Interspecies Communication, and Planetary Fields

Author: Nicole Flynn
Institution: Symfield PBC
Date: Feb, 2026

Publication Record: This document has been cryptographically timestamped and recorded on blockchain to establish immutable proof of authorship and publication date. 

“At the turn of the last century the French philosopher Henri Bergson wrote a series of texts where he criticized the inability of the science of his time to think the new, the truly novel. The first obstacle was, of course, a mechanical and linear view of causality and the rigid determinism that it implied. Clearly, if all the future is already given in the past, if the future is merely that modality of time where previously determined possibilities become realized, then true innovation is impossible. To avoid this mistake, he thought, we must struggle to model the future as truly open ended, truly indeterminate, and the past and present as pregnant not only with possibilities which become real, but with virtualities which become actual. Unlike the former, which defines a process in which one structure out of a set of predefined forms acquires reality, the latter defines a process in which an open problem is solved in a variety of different ways, with actual forms emerging in the process of reaching a solution.”

Manuel DeLanda, "The Machinic Phylum" (1997), after Henri Bergson

Abstract

Multiple scientific disciplines have independently converged on coherence-based mechanisms as foundational to communication, organization, and information transfer in biological systems. Neuroscience has established Communication Through Coherence (CTC) as a primary mechanism for neural information exchange. Microbiology has identified universal interspecies signaling molecules that transcend species-specific communication boundaries. Biophysics has documented measurable biofield synchronization between organisms, including cross-species entrainment. Geophysics has demonstrated that human physiological rhythms synchronize with planetary electromagnetic field dynamics.

Despite the structural parallels across these findings, the convergence itself remains largely unexamined due to disciplinary boundaries that treat each domain as methodologically and conceptually independent. This paper synthesizes published evidence across six domains to pose a unifying question, do these parallel findings reflect a shared prelinguistic communication substrate operating beneath and independent of the symbolic, semantic, and species-specific channels through which it is conventionally studied?

Historical precedents, including research into subliminal perception, frequency-based biological interaction, and cross-cultural acoustic processing, are examined for what they reveal about communication channels that function independently of linguistic comprehension. The implications for cross-species communication, infrastructure design, and interdisciplinary methodology are discussed. Rather than proposing a definitive theoretical framework, this paper functions as an invitation to disciplinary specialists to examine whether their domain-specific findings may be local expressions of a more fundamental coherence dynamic.

Keywords: coherence, prelinguistic communication, Communication Through Coherence, interspecies signaling, biofield synchronization, cross-domain convergence, field dynamics, resonance, quorum sensing, Schumann resonance

1. Introduction: The Silo Problem

In the spring of 2015, Pascal Fries published a landmark revision of his Communication Through Coherence hypothesis in Neuron, demonstrating that neuronal groups communicate through rhythmic synchronization rather than through the content of their signals alone.^[1] In the same decade, microbiologists established that bacteria across hundreds of species communicate through a universal signaling molecule, autoinducer-2, in what has been called a “Bacterial Esperanto”, a prelinguistic chemical signal that transcends species boundaries.^[2] Concurrently, the HeartMath Institute published studies demonstrating that human heart rate variability synchronizes with the Earth’s geomagnetic field dynamics, and that individuals in coherent physiological states exhibit measurable synchronization with one another across continental distances.^[3]

These three findings emerged from entirely separate disciplines, neuroscience, microbiology, and biophysics, using different methodologies, different instruments, and different theoretical vocabularies. Yet they share a striking structural feature, in each case, the mechanism that enables communication is not the content of the signal, but the coherence relationship between the systems exchanging it. 

• The neural groups in Fries’s model do not communicate because of what their spikes encode; they communicate because their oscillatory phases are aligned. 
• The bacteria in quorum sensing networks do not respond to species-specific molecular identities; they respond to a concentration threshold of a universal signal. 
• The human physiological systems in HeartMath’s research do not synchronize because they are transmitting semantic information to one another; they synchronize because they have entered a shared resonant state.

The question this paper raises is simple but consequential, what if these are not separate phenomena that happen to resemble one another, but local expressions of a single underlying dynamic? And if so, what would that imply for how we understand communication, not merely between neurons, between bacteria, or between organisms, but as a fundamental process that precedes and underlies all of these domain-specific manifestations?

The disciplinary structure of modern science makes this question nearly invisible. Neuroscientists publish in neuroscience journals, read by neuroscientists, reviewed by neuroscientists. Microbiologists operate within a parallel but separate ecosystem of publication and peer review. Biophysicists, geophysicists, and researchers in consciousness studies each occupy their own institutional and intellectual spaces. The result is that convergent findings remain isolated within their respective domains, and the pattern that connects them goes unrecognized, not because the evidence is insufficient, but because no single discipline has jurisdiction over the question.

This paper is an attempt to make that pattern visible. It does not propose a unified mathematical formalism, that work exists but lies beyond the scope of this discussion. Rather, it synthesizes published, peer-reviewed evidence from multiple fields to demonstrate that the convergence is real, that it has identifiable structural features, and that it raises questions of significant practical and theoretical consequence.

2. Historical Context: What Subliminal Research Accidentally Revealed

The history of subliminal perception research, typically dismissed as a cautionary tale about pseudoscience and marketing excess, contains an underexamined empirical finding that is directly relevant to the thesis of this paper. Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, researchers investigated whether information presented below conscious perceptual thresholds could influence behavior, emotion, or cognition.^[4] The popular narrative focuses on the manipulative applications, hidden messages in advertising, back-masked audio in music, and concludes that the effects are either nonexistent or negligibly small.

However, a more careful reading of the literature reveals a finding that the popular narrative obscures. While the evidence for semantic subliminal influence, the idea that a hidden verbal message can direct specific behavior, is indeed weak and poorly replicated, the evidence for subliminal priming of affective states is considerably more robust.^[5] Subliminally presented stimuli reliably shift mood, arousal, and evaluative judgments, even when the stimuli are presented in conditions that preclude conscious semantic processing. This holds across modalities: visual, auditory, and tactile.

The critical question, largely unasked in the original literature, is this: if the semantic content of a subliminal message is not what drives the measured effects, what does? A partial answer emerges from cross-linguistic studies of prosodic perception. Research in affective prosody demonstrates that listeners can reliably identify emotional states from speech in languages they do not understand.^[6] The rhythmic contour, tonal variation, and temporal dynamics of speech carry emotional and intentional information that is processed independently of, and, in many cases, prior to, lexical comprehension. This suggests that speech contains at least two information channels, a semantic channel that requires linguistic competence, and a prosodic channel that operates pre-linguistically and cross-culturally.

What subliminal research inadvertently demonstrated, then, is not that hidden messages can control behavior, but that a communication channel exists beneath linguistic processing that biological systems are natively equipped to receive and respond to. The content of a subliminal message may be irrelevant. The frequency, rhythm, and coherence properties of the carrier signal may be what the nervous system is actually registering. This reframing transforms the subliminal literature from a failed attempt at linguistic manipulation into early evidence for the prelinguistic communication substrate that this paper examines.

3. Domain I: Neural Communication Through Coherence

The Communication Through Coherence (CTC) hypothesis, first proposed by Fries in 2005 and substantially revised in 2015, represents one of the most well-supported frameworks in contemporary systems neuroscience.^[1,7] Its central proposition is that anatomical connections between neural populations are dynamically rendered effective or ineffective through the presence or absence of rhythmic synchronization.^[8] A postsynaptic neural group receiving input from multiple presynaptic groups will respond preferentially to those groups with which it shares phase coherence; inputs arriving at random phases of the excitability cycle have low connectivity efficiency.

Several features of CTC are directly relevant to the broader thesis of this paper. First, the mechanism is frequency-based: gamma-band oscillations (30–90 Hz) create temporal windows of approximately three milliseconds during which excitatory input can be effective, with the remainder of the cycle dominated by inhibition.^[1] Communication succeeds not because of signal strength or semantic content, but because of temporal alignment between sender and receiver oscillatory states.

Second, recent work has extended CTC to include cross-frequency coupling (CFC), the interaction between oscillations at different frequencies. Theta-phase modulation of gamma-band coherence has been documented across brain regions, suggesting that the brain employs a hierarchical coherence architecture in which slow rhythms coordinate the timing of fast rhythms.^[9] This finding is significant because it demonstrates that coherence-based communication is not limited to a single frequency band but operates across scales through the relational dynamics between frequencies.

Third, CTC operates bidirectionally with frequency-specific directionality: gamma-band synchronization predominates in the feedforward direction (from lower to higher cortical areas), while beta-band synchronization predominates in the feedback direction.^[8] This suggests that the brain uses different frequency relationships to distinguish between different types of information flow, not through the content of the signals, but through the coherence architecture within which the signals are embedded.

The implications extend beyond intra-brain communication. If the fundamental mechanism of neural information transfer is phase synchronization rather than content encoding, this raises the question of whether the same mechanism operates at scales larger than the neural network, between organisms, between species, and between biological systems and their electromagnetic environments.

4. Domain II: Universal Interspecies Signaling in Microbiology

Among the most compelling evidence for a prelinguistic communication substrate comes from the microbiology of quorum sensing. The autoinducer-2 (AI-2) signaling system, first characterized in Vibrio harveyi, has been identified across an extraordinary range of both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial species.^[2] Unlike species-specific autoinducer signals, AI-2 functions as what researchers have termed a universal interspecies communication molecule, a chemical signal that crosses taxonomic boundaries and enables coordinated behavior among diverse microbial communities.

The theoretical significance of AI-2 for the present discussion lies in what it reveals about the architecture of biological communication. Species-specific signals operate as closed channels: only organisms equipped with the corresponding receptor can detect and respond to the signal. AI-2, by contrast, operates as an open channel, a signal that biological systems across vast phylogenetic distances are natively equipped to produce, detect, and respond to. Bassler’s group has described this as a “combinatorial approach to distinguish between one another that is reminiscent of the molecular mechanism underlying odor detection and differentiation in higher organisms.”^[2]

The parallel to CTC in neuroscience is structural. In both cases, communication depends not on the specific identity of the signal (the particular molecule, the particular spike pattern) but on a relational property, concentration threshold in quorum sensing, phase alignment in neural coherence, that is independent of the signal’s content. The bacteria are not exchanging semantic information. They are participating in a coherence dynamic: when enough systems are oscillating in coordination, the collective crosses a threshold and behavior changes. This is coherence operating at the chemical rather than the electromagnetic level, but the structural logic is identical. Further evidence for cross-domain coherence mechanisms in microbiology comes from diffusible signal factors (DSF), which function as interspecies signals across even broader taxonomic boundaries. Burkholderia cenocepacia produces BDSF, a structural analog of signals from Xanthomonas campestris, and this signal inhibits growth in the fungal species Candida albicans, demonstrating that coherence-based signaling operates not merely between bacterial species but across kingdoms of life.^[10]

5. Domain III: Cellular Resonance and Frequency-Based Biological Interaction

The proposition that biological cells are resonant systems, capable of both emitting and responding to electromagnetic oscillations, has been documented across a wide range of cell types. Pohl and Pollock (1986) detected cellular resonances in bacteria, yeast, algae, avian cells, and mammalian cells, establishing that resonant oscillation is a conserved property of living systems rather than a specialized feature of neural tissue.^[11] The Fröhlich coherence model, proposed by physicist Herbert Fröhlich in the late 1960s, provides a theoretical framework for understanding these observations.^[12] Fröhlich hypothesized that biological systems, driven far from thermal equilibrium by metabolic energy, would exhibit coherent long-range oscillations in which large numbers of molecules vibrate in phase. The model predicts that cellular structures, particularly cytoskeletal elements such as microtubules, can sustain coherent electromagnetic oscillations that enable long-range intra- and intercellular signaling.

The relevance of this work to the history of frequency-based biological intervention is instructive. Royal Raymond Rife, working in the 1920s and 1930s, claimed that specific electromagnetic frequencies could interact selectively with pathogenic organisms.^[13] His work was condemned by the American Medical Association, and actual devices bearing his name have been associated with health fraud. (Nothing to see here.) However, the underlying principle, that electromagnetic frequencies at specific resonances interact with biological systems at the cellular level, has been partially vindicated by subsequent research. Tumor-treating fields (TTFields), which apply alternating electric fields at frequencies tuned to disrupt mitotic spindle formation, received FDA approval for the treatment of glioblastoma multiform.^[14] Laboratory studies have demonstrated that pulsed electromagnetic fields at specific frequencies can inhibit cancer cell proliferation without affecting normal cells.^[15]

The pattern is consistent, the specific historical claims of Rife remain under-examined, but the general principle that frequency-based interaction with biological systems is real, measurable, and therapeutically significant is now supported by peer-reviewed evidence and regulatory approval. What remains unresolved, and what this paper suggests is the critical open question, is whether cellular resonance, neural coherence, and interspecies chemical signaling are separate phenomena that happen to involve oscillatory dynamics, or whether they are expressions of a single coherence substrate operating through different media.

6. Domain IV: Biofield Synchronization and Interspecies Coherence

The concept of the biofield, the electromagnetic and other energy fields generated by and surrounding living organisms, has moved from the margins of scientific discourse toward increasing empirical legitimacy. The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health recognizes biofield research as an emerging area of study, and peer-reviewed publications in biofield physiology have appeared in mainstream journals.^[16]

Research from the HeartMath Institute provides some of the most rigorously documented evidence for biofield synchronization. Their studies demonstrate that when individuals enter a state of physiological coherence, characterized by a smooth, sine-wave-like heart rate variability pattern, multiple physiological systems (cardiac, respiratory, autonomic) synchronize to the rhythm generated by the heart.^[17] This internal coherence, once established, extends outward. Studies have shown measurable synchronization of heart rhythms between individuals in close proximity, and between individuals practicing coherence techniques simultaneously at geographically separate locations.^[3]

The extension to interspecies coherence is particularly significant for the thesis of this paper. Dr. Barrie Sands, an integrative veterinarian and HeartMath-certified trainer, has documented measurable electromagnetic field synchronization between humans and their companion animals.^[18] This finding suggests that biofield coherence is not species-specific, that the mechanism by which physiological systems synchronize operates at a level beneath species-specific biological architecture. The human and the animal do not need to share a language, a signaling molecule, or even a similar nervous system architecture. What they share is the capacity for resonant entrainment, the ability of oscillating systems to synchronize when they are within each other’s field of influence.

The University of Saskatchewan’s research program on Intuitive Interspecies Communication (IIC), partially funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is investigating these phenomena through systematic study of practitioners who report detailed, non-verbal, non-physical communication with animals.^[19] Their working definition of IIC, “a detailed, non-verbal and non-physical form of communication between humans and other animals” that includes “the mutual exchange of visceral feelings, emotions, mental impressions and thoughts, embodied sensations of touch, smell, taste, sound, as well as visuals in the mind’s eye”, describes a communication channel that is by definition prelinguistic and pre-symbolic. The research team’s candid assessment, “we don’t actually know how this works yet”, underscores both the empirical reality of the phenomenon and the absence of a satisfactory theoretical framework.

7. Domain V: Planetary Field Dynamics and Human Physiological Synchronization

Perhaps the most expansive evidence for a coherence substrate that transcends individual organisms comes from research documenting synchronization between human physiological rhythms and geomagnetic field dynamics. The HeartMath Institute’s Global Coherence Monitoring System has produced data showing that human autonomic nervous system activity, reflected in heart rate variability (HRV), synchronizes over longer time periods with changes in the amplitude of resonant frequencies produced by geomagnetic field-line resonances and Schumann resonances.^[3]

A global study involving 104 participants across five countries, United States, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, and England, demonstrated significant synchronization between participants’ HRV and local magnetic field data.^[3] Critically, this synchronization was enhanced when participants engaged in heart-focused coherence practices: on the day when all groups simultaneously performed a Heart Lock-In technique, the correlation between HRV and local magnetic field data was significantly higher than on any other day of the study period, and inter-participant heart rhythm synchronization was significantly elevated across all groups.

Earlier research by Persinger documented that shielding individuals from the naturally occurring Schumann resonance frequency (approximately 7.83 Hz) disrupted circadian rhythms and produced health effects including migraine and emotional distress, which resolved upon re-exposure.^[20] This suggests that biological systems are not merely passively embedded in the Earth’s electromagnetic environment but are actively coupled to it, that the planetary field serves as a synchronizing influence on biological rhythms at the individual and possibly the collective level.

The implications of this evidence for the thesis of this paper are substantial. If human physiological systems synchronize with planetary electromagnetic dynamics through coherence mechanisms, the same fundamental process, resonant entrainment between oscillating systems, appears to operate from the intracellular scale (Fröhlich coherence), through the neural network scale (CTC), the inter-organismal scale (biofield synchronization), and up to the planetary scale (Schumann synchronization). The consistency of the mechanism across these scales demands explanation.

8. Domain VI: The Frequency Environment and Unintended Coherence Modulation

Less studied but potentially of great practical consequence, concerns the electromagnetic frequency environment created by modern infrastructure. Human beings in developed nations are continuously immersed in electromagnetic fields generated by power grids, wireless communication networks, internet-of-things devices, broadcast media, and an ever-expanding array of electronic systems. The frequencies emitted by this infrastructure were designed for data transmission and power delivery, not for biological interaction. However, if the evidence reviewed in the preceding sections is correct, if biological systems are resonant, if coherence is the mechanism of biological communication, and if physiological rhythms entrain to environmental electromagnetic dynamics, then the infrastructure frequency environment is not biologically neutral. It is, by default, a coherence-modulating influence on every biological system within its range.

8.1 The Infrastructure Frequency Landscape

To understand the potential for coherence modulation, it is necessary to map the actual frequency environment in which biological systems now operate. The electromagnetic spectrum occupied by modern infrastructure spans multiple orders of magnitude:

Extremely Low Frequency (ELF): 3–300 Hz Power transmission lines operate at 50 Hz (Europe, Asia) or 60 Hz (Americas). These frequencies fall within the range of human brain wave activity: delta (0.5–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), and beta (12–30 Hz). The Schumann resonance fundamental frequency of 7.83 Hz, with which human physiology has been shown to synchronize, sits precisely in this range.[3,20]

Very Low Frequency (VLF) to Low Frequency (LF): 3 kHz–300 kHz Used for submarine communication, navigation systems (LORAN), and wireless power transfer. These frequencies overlap with the upper range of neural gamma oscillations (30–90 Hz) and extend into ranges relevant to cellular membrane potentials and ion channel dynamics.[21]

Radio Frequency (RF): 3 MHz–300 GHz This is the domain of wireless communication infrastructure:

• AM radio: 0.535–1.705 MHz
• FM radio: 88–108 MHz
• Television broadcast: 54–890 MHz
• Mobile networks: 700 MHz–2.6 GHz (4G/5G)
• Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
• Satellite communications: 1–40 GHz

The critical observation is not that these frequencies are necessarily harmful in the sense of causing acute tissue damage, regulatory standards already address thermal effects, but that they occupy the same spectrum in which biological coherence operates and that their modulation patterns, pulsing, amplitude variation, frequency hopping, are themselves information-carrying structures to which resonant biological systems may couple.

8.2 Frequency Overlap and Interference Patterns

The power grid frequency of 60 Hz is precisely eight times the fundamental Schumann resonance frequency of 7.83 Hz. This is not a minor offset, it is a harmonic relationship. When two oscillating systems share harmonic relationships, they interact through entrainment, beat frequencies, and constructive or destructive interference. If human autonomic nervous system rhythms couple to the Schumann resonance, as documented by McCraty et al.,[3] then continuous exposure to a harmonic frequency at significantly higher amplitude (power lines generate fields orders of magnitude stronger than the Schumann field) represents a potential entrainment competitor.

Research on ELF electromagnetic fields has established that fields in the range of power-line frequencies can influence biological processes including cell proliferation, gene expression, and circadian rhythmicity.[21] The World Health Organization has classified ELF magnetic fields as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."[22] However, these investigations have focused on pathological endpoints, cancer, reproductive effects, rather than on the subtler question of how ambient fields interact with the coherence dynamics that underlie normal biological communication and self-regulation.

A parallel concern exists in the RF range. Wi-Fi routers operate at 2.4 GHz, transmitting data through amplitude and frequency modulation at rates of 54–600 Mbps. The carrier frequency itself is far above the frequency range of neural oscillations, but the modulation envelope, the pattern of amplitude variation used to encode information, contains lower-frequency components that fall within biologically relevant ranges. If cellular structures such as microtubules function as resonant antennas, as suggested by Fröhlich coherence theory,[12] then modulated RF fields represent not merely a background electromagnetic presence but a structured signal to which biological systems may inadvertently couple.

8.3 Documented Biological Effects of Non-Thermal EMF Exposure

The regulatory framework governing electromagnetic radiation exposure is based primarily on the avoidance of thermal effects, tissue heating caused by energy absorption. The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limits enforced by the FCC and similar agencies worldwide are designed to prevent temperatures rises of more than 1°C in tissue.[24] This framework does not address non-thermal biological effects, interactions that occur at field strengths well below those required to cause measurable heating.

A substantial body of peer-reviewed research has documented non-thermal biological effects of RF-EMF exposure:

• Oxidative Stress and Cellular Signaling: Multiple studies have shown that RF-EMF exposure at non-thermal intensities increases production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and alters cellular redox balance.[25] Since ROS function as signaling molecules in numerous biological pathways, alterations in ROS production represent a mechanism by which RF-EMF could modulate cellular behavior independently of thermal effects.
• Blood-Brain Barrier Permeability: Research by Salford and colleagues demonstrated that exposure to mobile phone frequencies (900 MHz) increased blood-brain barrier permeability in rats at non-thermal power levels.[26] This finding has been replicated in multiple studies and suggests that RF-EMF can alter membrane dynamics through mechanisms distinct from heating.
• Melatonin Suppression: Melatonin, the primary hormone regulating circadian rhythms, has been shown to be suppressed by both ELF and RF electromagnetic field exposure.[27] Given that melatonin production is regulated by the pineal gland's response to environmental light-dark cycles, the finding that artificial electromagnetic fields can disrupt this regulation suggests that the circadian oscillator, one of the most fundamental coherence systems in mammalian biology, is susceptible to electromagnetic interference.
• Calcium Efflux and Voltage-Gated Ion Channels: Adey and colleagues documented that ELF fields could modulate calcium ion flux across cell membranes, particularly through effects on voltage-gated calcium channels.[28] Since calcium signaling is a universal mechanism of cellular communication and regulation, electromagnetic modulation of calcium dynamics represents a direct pathway by which external fields could influence biological coherence.

The pattern across these findings is consistent with the coherence modulation hypothesis: biological systems are not merely passive targets of electromagnetic radiation but active resonant systems that couple to external fields through mechanisms more subtle than tissue heating.

8.4 The Unexamined Experiment

What makes the infrastructure frequency environment uniquely significant for the thesis of this paper is that it represents an uncontrolled, global-scale experiment in coherence modulation that no institution designed, no ethics board approved, and no scientific discipline is systematically monitoring.

The human organism evolved in an electromagnetic environment dominated by three sources: solar radiation, lightning-generated Schumann resonances, and the Earth's static geomagnetic field. This environment was relatively stable over evolutionary timescales. In the span of approximately 130 years, from the first power grids in the 1880s to the present, the electromagnetic environment has been transformed. A person living in a modern urban center is now exposed to electromagnetic field densities that are billions of times higher than the natural background in frequencies spanning ELF to microwave ranges.

This transformation occurred without any systematic study of how the change in electromagnetic environment would interact with the coherence mechanisms that, according to the evidence assembled in this paper, underlie biological communication at every scale. The assumption, implicit in the regulatory frameworks governing EMF exposure, has been that if the fields do not cause acute tissue damage or measurable heating, they can be treated as biologically inert. But if coherence is the mechanism of biological organization, this assumption is untenable. A field does not need to be strong enough to damage tissue to be strong enough to modulate the phase relationships between oscillating systems. It only needs to be strong enough to couple.

8.5 Coherence Ecology: Toward a New Research Framework

The evidence reviewed here suggests the need for a new interdisciplinary field that might be called coherence ecology, the study of how engineered frequency environments interact with biological coherence dynamics at scales ranging from the cellular to the societal.

Such a field would investigate questions currently addressed by no existing discipline:

• Frequency hygiene in built environments: Which frequency bands, modulation patterns, and field strengths minimize disruption to biological coherence? Can spaces be designed to preserve or enhance the coherence environment rather than degrading it?
• Temporal patterning of exposure: Does continuous exposure to coherence-disrupting frequencies have different effects than intermittent exposure? Do biological systems adapt or does sensitivity increase over time?
• Differential susceptibility: Are certain populations, children, whose nervous systems are still developing; elderly individuals with reduced physiological coherence; individuals with neurological or psychiatric conditions, more susceptible to coherence disruption?
• Beneficial frequency design: If disruption is possible, enhancement should also be possible. Can frequency environments be engineered to support biological coherence? The finding that heart-focused coherence practices enhance synchronization with geomagnetic field dynamics[3] suggests that certain states or practices may buffer against disruption, but could environmental design achieve similar effects?
• Cumulative and cross-frequency effects: Current research typically examines single frequencies in isolation. What are the interactive effects when biological systems are simultaneously exposed to power-line frequencies, Wi-Fi modulation, cellular network signals, and broadcast media, all superimposed on the natural Schumann and geomagnetic background?

The practical implications are substantial. If the coherence hypothesis is correct, then the frequency environment of schools affects learning (which depends on neural coherence), the frequency environment of hospitals affects healing (which depends on cellular and systemic coherence), and the frequency environment of cities affects collective social behavior (which may depend on inter-individual coherence synchronization). None of these effects would necessarily be dramatic or immediately visible. They would manifest as subtle shifts in baselines: attention spans slightly shorter, sleep slightly less restorative, immune function slightly suppressed, social cohesion slightly degraded. Over populations and decades, subtle shifts in baselines produce large effects.

8.6 A Recognition

This observation is not offered as an indictment of technology or as a call to abandon electromagnetic infrastructure. It is a recognition that if biological systems couple to electromagnetic environments through coherence mechanisms, and if the electromagnetic environment has been radically transformed by industrial and communication infrastructure, then the coherence environment in which biological systems operate has been correspondingly altered, without the change being noticed, studied, or characterized, because no scientific discipline currently has jurisdiction over the question.

The path forward is not to eliminate the infrastructure, that is neither possible nor desirable, but to bring the same level of scientific rigor and engineering sophistication to the design of coherence-compatible frequency environments that we currently bring to bandwidth optimization and power efficiency. The evidence assembled in this paper suggests that such work is not merely prudent but necessary, and that the longer it is delayed, the more we are conducting an experiment whose results we will not understand until long after they have manifested.

9. The Convergence Hypothesis

The evidence reviewed in Sections 3 through 8 can be summarized as follows:

In neuroscience, communication between neural populations depends on phase coherence, not signal content (CTC). In microbiology, interspecies communication depends on threshold dynamics of a universal signal molecule, not species-specific encoding (quorum sensing). In cellular biology, living cells are resonant oscillators that emit and respond to electromagnetic frequencies (Fröhlich coherence). In biophysics, organisms synchronize their physiological rhythms with one another and with environmental electromagnetic fields through entrainment (biofield coherence). In geophysics, human physiological systems couple to planetary electromagnetic dynamics through resonance (Schumann synchronization). In environmental science, the ambient frequency environment created by infrastructure interacts with biological systems in ways that are not yet characterized (coherence modulation).

The conventional interpretation of these findings treats each as a domain-specific phenomenon with domain-specific mechanisms and domain-specific explanations. Phase coherence in neural networks is a property of neural oscillations. Quorum sensing is a property of bacterial signaling chemistry. Biofield synchronization is a property of cardiac electromagnetic output. Schumann synchronization is a property of geomagnetic coupling. Under this interpretation, the structural similarities between these phenomena are coincidental or, at most, analogical.

The convergence hypothesis proposed here is more parsimonious. It suggests that these phenomena share structural features because they are expressions of a common underlying dynamic: coherence as a fundamental property of communication in complex systems. Under this hypothesis, coherence is not a metaphor borrowed from physics and applied loosely to biology. It is the actual mechanism by which information is organized, transmitted, and received across scales, from intracellular to planetary.

This hypothesis makes specific predictions. If the coherence substrate is real and operates across domains, then interventions that enhance coherence at one scale should have measurable effects at adjacent scales. An individual entering a state of physiological coherence should, for example, measurably influence the coherence state of proximate biological systems, other humans, animals, or even microbial communities. Conversely, disruption of coherence at any scale, through pharmacological intervention, electromagnetic interference, or environmental frequency pollution, should produce measurable effects that propagate beyond the scale at which the disruption occurs.

Some of these predictions have already been partially confirmed by existing research, though they have not been interpreted within the framework proposed here. Others remain untested and represent opportunities for directed investigation.

10. Toward a Deeper Layer: PREmordial Communication and What Lies Beneath

The evidence and analysis presented thus far address coherence as a mechanism that can be observed, measured, and characterized using existing scientific instruments and methodologies. However, intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that the convergence hypothesis, if correct, points toward a layer of organization that may lie beneath even the oscillatory and resonant dynamics documented above. If coherence is the mechanism of communication at every scale from the intracellular to the planetary, the question arises, what is the nature of the substrate in which this coherence inheres? The neural oscillations studied by Fries are electromagnetic phenomena in neural tissue. The quorum sensing signals studied by Bassler are molecular concentration dynamics in chemical solution. The biofield synchronizations studied by McCraty are electromagnetic field interactions between organisms. Each domain studies coherence through the medium available to its instruments. But the medium is not the coherence itself, any more than the ocean is the wave.

This paper deliberately refrains from submitting the formal mathematical description of this deeper substrate. Such formalisms exist in form and are the subject of ongoing research that will be presented in subsequent work. For the present purposes, it is sufficient to note that the convergence documented here requires explanation, that the structural parallels across six scientific domains are too consistent and too detailed to be dismissed as coincidence or loose analogy, and that the explanation, when it arrives, will necessarily involve a rethinking of what communication is at its most fundamental level.

The term “premordial” is used here deliberately, in distinction from “primordial.” Primordial refers to temporal origin, that which existed at the beginning. Premordial, as employed in this context, refers to that which precedes the conditions under which form itself becomes possible. A premordial communication substrate would not be the first communication system to evolve, rather it would be the field dynamic within which evolution, organization, and communication become possible in the first place. The distinction is not semantic. It points to a category of inquiry that current scientific methodology is not equipped to address directly, but toward which the convergence evidence assembled here points unmistakably.

11. Implications and Applications

11.1 Cross-Species Communication

Every major attempt at cross-species communication in the scientific literature has employed a translation paradigm: mapping animal signal systems onto human linguistic frameworks (teaching great apes sign language, decoding cetacean vocalizations into grammatical structures, training dolphins to respond to symbolic commands). These approaches have produced valuable insights but have consistently reached a ceiling beyond which further progress has proven elusive.^[23]

The convergence hypothesis suggests that this ceiling is structural rather than methodological. If cross-species communication naturally occurs at the coherence level, as suggested by interspecies quorum sensing, biofield synchronization between humans and animals, and the cross-kingdom signaling documented in microbiology, then the translation paradigm is attempting to operate at the wrong layer of the communication architecture. Rather than encoding human semantic content in a form accessible to another species, a coherence-based approach would seek to establish resonant entrainment at the prelinguistic level that both species natively share.

Preliminary frameworks for such an approach are in development and will be described in future publications. For the present, it is sufficient to note that the evidence assembled here provides a principled foundation for cross-species communication research that does not depend on linguistic translation.

11.2 Infrastructure and Environmental Design

If the ambient electromagnetic frequency environment modulates biological coherence dynamics, the design of that environment becomes a matter of direct relevance to human health, cognitive function, and social behavior. This suggests the need for a new interdisciplinary field, one might call it coherence ecology, that studies the interaction between engineered frequency environments and biological coherence at scales ranging from the cellular to the societal.

11.3 Interdisciplinary Methodology

The most immediate practical implication of this paper may be methodological. If the convergence hypothesis has merit, then domain-specific studies of coherence phenomena are studying local expressions of a global dynamic. This suggests that findings from any single domain should be evaluated not only within that domain’s theoretical framework but also for their consistency with coherence findings in other domains. A neuroscientist studying CTC might find that patterns observed in neural synchronization mirror patterns documented in microbial quorum sensing. A biophysicist studying biofield synchronization might find that the same mathematical relationships describe neural cross-frequency coupling. These cross-domain consistencies, if they exist, would constitute strong evidence for the shared substrate proposed here.

12. An Invitation, Not a Conclusion

This paper has been constructed as a wayfinding document rather than a conventional research report. It does not claim to have proven the existence of a universal coherence substrate, nor does it propose to have explained the mechanism by which such a substrate would operate. What it has done is assemble evidence from six scientific domains that converges on a single structural pattern, coherence as the foundational mechanism of biological communication, and argued that this convergence is too consistent to ignore and too significant to leave unexamined.

The questions this evidence raises are offered as invitations to researchers across disciplines:

• To neuroscientists: does the Communication Through Coherence framework, when extended beyond neural tissue to biological systems generally, retain its explanatory power? What would neural coherence research look like if it were designed to interface with findings from microbiology, biophysics, and geophysics?
• To microbiologists: does the universal interspecies signaling system represented by AI-2 share structural features with coherence mechanisms documented in neural and biofield research? Could quorum sensing be understood as a chemical expression of the same phase-synchronization dynamics observed in neural oscillations?
• To biophysicists and biofield researchers: can the interspecies and inter-organismal synchronization documented in biofield studies be formally connected to the intra-organismal coherence mechanisms described by CTC and Fröhlich coherence?
• To physicists: does the cross-scale consistency of coherence phenomena suggest the existence of a field dynamic that is not currently captured by known physical frameworks? What would such a field dynamic look like mathematically?
• To engineers and infrastructure designers: if the ambient frequency environment modulates biological coherence, what design principles would minimize disruption and potentially enhance the coherence ecology of built environments?
• To all: what would science look like if the disciplines studying these phenomena talked to one another?

The evidence is here. The connections are visible. The question is whether we are ready to see them.

References

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Disclosure: The mathematical formalism underlying the convergence hypothesis described in this paper is the subject of ongoing research and patent applications by Symfield PBC. Inquiries regarding the formal framework may be directed to the author.

© 2026 Nicole Flynn / Symfield PBC. All rights reserved.