Questions

2.2. In my theoretical terms (global workspace theory), conscious information is distributed widely in cortex and elsewhere, to facilitate recruitment of unconscious knowledge sources that can work together to identify the input, and to construct a nonroutine action in response to it. (Baars, 1988; Baars, 1996). [Baars, 1995 #81]

3. A number of neuroscientists have proposed that there are looping activation cycles going between the sensory nuclei of each thalamus and corresponding cortical sense projections areas. (e.g. Edelman) Each thalamus maps directly into corresponding sensory and motor cortex, and in the case of vision, it is believed that there are many times more neurons projecting "down" from the visual cortex to the visual nucleus of the thalamus (LGN) as there are going "upward."[Baars, 1995 #81]

4.1 Thalamus does not have the exquisite specificity of content that we experience in looking at a visual scene or listening to a symphony; not to mention the kind of detail we can access when discussing an abstract topic like consciousness. That kind of specificity only emerges in cortex. [Baars, 1995 #81]

• One hypothesis is that this larger-scale order is similar to the sort of order which emerges in the scroll waves of concentration in the Zhabotinske reaction, in the formation of Benard cells of convection in fluid dynamics, or in populations in ecology.[Hardcastle, 1994 #43]

• when responding to deterministic input, the spiking activity of bulbar neurons are Poisson-distributed in time, similar to the pattern of radio-active decay. [Hardcastle, 1994 #43]

• This paper describes a potential ‘bottom-level’ mechanism in the brain’s recursive, hierarchial organization driven or selected by (and also driving and selecting) higher-level mechanisms (e.g. neural networks, attentional scanning circuits, coherent firing of distributed neurons). [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Globus (1992) describes the brain as ‘fractal-like”, with recursive levels, each using ‘edge of chaos’ non-linear dynamic processing with ongoing tuning/detuning. [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Baas (1994) has mathematically described ‘hyperstructures’ with intrinsic observer functions which emerge from hierarchies, and hierarchial schemes of brain organization leading to consciousness have been proposed (e.g. Scott, 1978, 1994; Somjen, 1983) [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Adding the brain stem/limbic ‘hedonic’ system and language centers to the external thalamo-cortical system, Edelman (1989) describes re-entrant circuitry from which global mappings of neuronal populations are ‘selected’ to reach consciousness by a Darwinian-like survival mechanism.[Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Atkin (1992) has defined consciousness as emergent information itself at the moment of generation – ongoing, self-organizing change in a self/world model. [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• My question – why would brain cells not evolve to continue to regenerate/grow on a scale like our skin cells?

• Quantum coherence has also been linked to more specific biological function and computation. Conrad (1992) has argued that superposition of spatially-separated electron states facilitates common biomolecular interactions such as antigen-antibody, neurotransmitter-receptor, enzyme-substrate, protein self-assembly and other functions. Conrad further suggests that quantum coherence and parallelism inherent in the quantum-mechanical wave function can enhance the speed, reliability, and energy dissipation of elementary switches such as those involved in molecular computation (including, perhaps, tubulins within microtubules). [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Penrose (1989) has also invoked the possibility of quantum superposition in synaptic plasticity. Non-periodic tiling patterns of quasi-crystals (’Penrose tiles’) require ‘non-local’ effects; it appears necessary to ‘know’ the state of the pattern many tiles away from the point of assembly. [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• also considers that collapse of superpositioned states and conversion from quantum to classical behaviour depends on a threshold related to quantum gravity. He predicts that gravity, although an extremely weak force, influences the quantum realm because it acts on the spacetime structure itself. Objects that become larger than a crucial size spontaneously actualize one of their possibilities; spacetime curvature causes the system’s wave function to collapse ‘under its own weight’ Herbert (1993) has used a ‘quantum realm’ approach to estimate a mass value for ‘quantumness’ and obtains a rough estimate of 10⁶ daltons. This is the size of Eccles’ pre-synaptic ‘microsite’ and also of about ten tubulin subunits within a microtubule. Penrose calculates a higher number of tubulins whose coherence for a critical time will self-collapse, and result in a single conscious event. According to Penrose, the manner in which quantum gravity can act as a bridge between the quantum world and the classical world will await new discoveries in quantum physics. [Hameroff, 1994 #44] (my question – then why can an atom be both a particle or a wave if it doesn’t meet the quantum gravity mass requirements?)

• quantum field theory describes the underlying reality of everything in the universe (including consciousness) as consisting of three components: the vacuum, space and time. A ‘field of fields’ which contains no particles, the vacuum gives rise to quantum wave/particles as excitations or energy fluctuations within it (‘like sound from a drum skin’ (Zohr, 1990)). A ground state is a component field of the vacuum whose excitation can yield the two types of wave/particles: fermions and bosons. (my question – isn’t space and a vacuum essentially the same?, how can a vacuum give rise to anything?) [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• (footnote) Frohlich pumped phonons have already been considered in microtubules as a basis for information processing via spin-glass behavior and as a clocking mechanism for cellular automata functions. The cooperative coupling resulting in coherence has been assumed to be phonons (bosons) coupled to dipoles or electrons ‘trapped’ in hydrophobic regions (e.g. aromatic amino acid residues with resonant orbitals). Microtubules’ paracrystalline periodic lattice and cylindrical configuration provide an ideal coherent structure, and the functions of microtubules are crucial to intracellular cognition. Thus spin-glass and automata models, similar if not equivalent to Bose-Einstein condensates, may manifest quantum computing by interactive patterns of coherent sets of pumped phonons (bosons) [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• (footnote) Frohlich theorized that energy could be stored without thermal loss in coherent, dipolar propagating proteins or in a thin layer of water and ions just beneath the cell membrane. Watterson (1987) has shown how organized, dynamic water clusters (’pixels’) can represent information at membrane and cytoskeletal surfaces. Considering the layer of ordered water outside and inside microtubules, Del Giudice et al. (1983) proposed that microtubules’ cylindrical structure may be understood by quantum-vacuum symmetry breaking and boson self-focusing by ordered water. Like the Meissner effect for superconducting media, electromagnetic energy would be confined inside filamentous regions around which the microtubule subunits gather. Del Giudice’s group (1983) showed that this self-focusing should result in filamentous beams of radius 15 nanometers, precisely the inner diameter of microtubules! [Hameroff, 1994 #44]

• Using quantum field theory, jibu et al (1994) have proposed that ordering of water molecules and the quantized electromagnetic field confined indside the hollow microtubule core manifest a specific collective dynamics called super-radiance. Accordingly, each microtubule can transform incoherent, disordered energy (molecular, thermal or electromagnetic) into coherent photons within its hollow core. Furthermore, coherent photons created by super-radiance may penetrate without loss along the microtubule as if the optical medium were made “transparent” by the propagating photons themselves. This is a quantum phenomenon called self-induced transparency (McCull and Hahn, 1987) Some evidence suggests weak photoemission from living cells, and Popp (1986) has proposed a regulatory role for ‘coherent biophotons’. Thus Jibu et al. suggest that microtubules can behave as optical waveguides which result in coherent photons; they estimate that this quantum coherence is capable of superposition of states among microtubules spatially distributed over hundreds of micron. These in turn are in superposition with other microtubules hundreds of microns away in other directions and so on. Consequently microtubule quantum dynamics may be coupled over brain-wide areas, a superposition which could solve the ‘binding problem’ and account for unity of thought and consciousness. [Hameroff, 1994 #44]