Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness

[Unity+]

 

 

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors. They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm

 

I think this is quite fascinating and could benefit future discoveries about the human brain. What does everyone think?

[jimmydasaint]

A brilliant find! Penrose and Hameroff's Orch OR model finally finds substantial evidence to back it. I find this news to be exciting and wonderful.. Really, it deserves a Nobel prize.

[Endy0816]

I think I'll withhold opinion for now. There have been a number of claims over the years.

[CharonY]

Doubtful about that one, too. Penrose has the tendency to slap quantum onto biological phenomena and claims it as shortcut to complex traits such as consciousness. There has been a fair amount of criticism the first time around, and I am doubtful that they have been addressed (especially as these are reviews/opinion pieces rather than original works).

[overtone]

I doubt individual brain cells are conscious, regardless of the details of their workings.

[jimmydasaint]

In my opinion, Penrose has pointed out microtubules in the brain as behaving like switches in a quantum computer due to the sheer number of tubulin subunits (the building blocks of microtubules) which are found within neurons (nerve cells) in the brain. I don't understand much about classical computation but I though binary used by computers had switches in a "1" or "0" position but, due to the special conditions in the brain where the conformation (specific protein shape) of the tubulin subunits can vary, they could adopt a position of "1", "0" or in between, generating a lot of information holding capacity.

 

The work has been criticised by Tegmark et al due to the insistence of the authors of the original theory that the quantum vibration of the tubulin subunits could be maintained for a relatively long period in the warm, wet and noisy environment of the brain. However, since then, it has been shown that bacteriochlorophyll also uses quantum vibrations at room temperature when electrons arising from light excitation go through the most efficient energy harvesting processes and the paper in the O.P. suggests that vibration is a "natural" quality of microtubules in brain neurons.

 

Additionally, a protein complex that contributed to the process of how long term potentiation (or memory) seemed to fit spatially on to brain neuron microtubule subunits perfectly.

 

In my view, the hypothesis has stood the test of time and now needs confirmation, affirmation and recognition as a robust theory by the general scientific community.

 

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/publications.html

Edited July 28, 2014 by jimmydasaint

[barfbag]

Too late! Ron L Hubbard told the world our cells were all individual life forms who can carry memories (engrams) and affect our attitudes and abilities.

 

His theory was that if something caused your cells sever pain or lack of oxygen or knocked you unconscious that the cells would record events around you and send you into panic mode should similar circumstances arise.

 

So if you had an operation and the surgeon said you take a long time getting to sleep, then maybe in later life you will become an insomniac.

 

It's true (Sarcasm) Just ask John Travolta, or Tom Cruise.

 

This theory was called Dianetics.

 

The Church of Scientology was founded on such beliefs. Any Scientology out there has undergone a treatment to rid their cells of engram memories. Cellular memory is called "The Reactive Mind", because a cell only reacts to stimuli.

 

This is how it begins...... Bwhahahahaha

 

 

However...

 

Ron L Hubbard later said Dianetics is wrong and he wrote it not knowing a religion would arise from it.

 

So the religion is a fraud

 

Note: I am not endorsing nor believe in Dianetics, but the OP and article seems like a Dianetics ad. Except in the new version Neurons are the conscious.

 

I realize the article was about Neurons, but POST # 5 mentioned Brain Cells and that jogged my mind to this.

 

I'm wondering about the validity of this article. Could they be reversing cause and effect in their studies.

Edited July 29, 2014 by barfbag

[Strange]

Too late! Ron L Hubbard told the world our cells were all individual life forms who can carry memories (engrams) and affect our attitudes and abilities..

 

He also said this was all caused by imprisoned souls from an intergalactic war (or some such tosh). Mediocre SF writer, crap pop-psychologist, good at inventing religions.

[barfbag]

good at inventing religions.

 

 

Yes. I had said it was a fraudulent religion, and there is no basis for dianetics.

 

I also think this article does not point to consciousness.

 

They are measuring Brainwaves from these Microtubules, but I fail to see why such a broadcast mechanism would represent consciousness. Perhaps it just mimics necessary thought the way our mouths mimic sounds. A mouth to the brain type metaphor.

 

I mean maybe the brain waves have some kind of message for the rest of the brain to act a certain way, and is just an internal brain messaging system.

 

How would that make it consciousness?

 

I think maybe one day consciousness will be measured, but I don't think this version makes a lot of sense.

[Strange]

I probably agree with you. I think Penrose is looking for a "magic" explanation of consciousness.

 

I just don't see any point in bringing a loony old dead fraud into it.

[Endy0816]

My main problem is that microtubules are by no means unique to brain cells.

 

Seems as though they are tying to suggest correlation implies causation here. Their sheer presence and assorted properties does not imply a link to consciousness. Only evidence of a link to consciousness would imply that.

[jimmydasaint]

I have to be honest and state that both Penrose and Hameroff use a bit of semantic obfuscation and semantic acrobatics to keep the concept of "another world" function causing a conscious thought to occur. However, if I remember correctly, the microtubules in the brain are thought to be quasi crystalline due to the strange arrangement of water molecules around them.

 

Additionally, there are several different hypotheses of what is meant by consciousness and, IMHO, epiphenomenalism or the emergence of consciousness from complex brain chemical reactions in feedback/feedforward loops seems to be the most popular.

Hameroff and Penrose state:

 

But how do neural firings lead to thoughts and feelings? Conventional ("functionalist") approaches fall short on the mind's enigmatic features. These include: 1) the nature of subjective experience, or qualia, our "inner life" (e.g. Nagel, 1974; Chalmers, 1996) 2) "binding" of spatially distributed brain activities into unitary objects in vision and a coherent sense of "self," 3) transition from pre-conscious processing to consciousness, 4) non-computability (Penrose, 1989; 1994; 1997), and 5) free will.

Functionalist approaches generally assume that conscious experience appears as a novel property at a critical level of computational complexity. On the surface this would seem to deal with issues 1 and 3, however a conscious threshold has neither been identified nor predicted, and there are no apparent differences in electrophysiological activities between non-conscious and conscious activity. Regarding the nature of experience (why we are not unfeeling "zombies") functionalism offers no testable predictions. Problem 2) of 'binding' in vision and self is often attributed by functionalists to temporal correlation (e.g. coherent 40 Hz), but it is unclear why temporal correlationper se should bind experience without an explanation of experience. As functionalism is based on deterministic computation, it is also unable to account for Penrose's proposed non­computability (4), or free will (5). Something may be missing

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html

[Genecks]

I'm not sure I believe Penrose. Consciousness is definitely some weird, obscure stuff. The whole subjective world ontop of the objective, as though there are two parallel dimensions with a bridge locus. I'm still fond of the holonomic brain theory.