The basic fundamental frequency of thought is the EEG alpha mode at 11 Hz or so. In contrast, the fundamental mode of sleep and of unconscious thought is the delta mode at 1.4 Hz or so.
Although science does not yet understand why these frequencies are important for consciousness, many measurements show that they are important for consciousness. Once again you imply that photon absorption and emission are instantaneous events and that is simply not true.
We approximate photon absorption and emission as instantaneous and then lots of otherwise very smart people can argue endlessly about the meaning of the instantaneous collapse of wavefunctions.
Photons are much more interesting because each photon has a different spectrum and the resonance between a source and an absorber is a strongly entangled event. Many of the supposed paradoxes of wavefunctions are just due to how science simplifies photon sensation.
Sensing a photon sets up a resonance between the source and observer and the resonance does not always excite the observer. Sometimes the source retains the photon, but the event does communicate phase information between the source and observer. There is a certain amount of entanglement with every event, not just with absorption events.
There is much discourse about photon emission and absorption by people who do not use the so-called time dependent formalism of quantum mechanics. This misleads many including Bell into very strange interpretations of the electrodynamic reality of photonics.
Yes, photons are a part of thought...is that really surprising? Given the well known lifetimes of photonics and neuronics, what is really amazing is that science often ignores time dependent QM when they study the time dependence of neural aware matter.
A photon never really ceases to exist. An emitted photon leaves a complementary photon hole behind in the source and an observed photon creates new matter in the observer. The photon therefore never ceases to exist but rather the source becomes decoherent with the observer with some rate.
You seem to believe that photon decoherence is not important for reality while I believe and have quantitatively shown that decoherence is what drives all force and all action. Decoherence is fun because decoherence is what drives action.