I found it necessary to develop additional conceptual approaches to the problem of managing the voluminous data and developed (Thornton & Carmody, 2009) the Coordinated Allocation of Resource Model (CAR) of brain functioning. This model asserts that each specific cognitive task requires a different (albeit overlapping in some situations) set of resources to accomplish the task successfully. Thus, reading requires a different set of electrophysiological resources to be successful at a task than an auditory task or a problem solving task.

Further conceptual development was pursued in the Thornton & Carmody (2013) article which introduced the concept of processing units. The figure presented below present how the processing units (in terms of the coherence and phase relations) are localized in terms of the 10-20 system. The arousal variables can also be examined in terms of processing units, i.e. relative power, microvolts, peak amplitudes, peak frequency.