A New Spin on the Quantum Brain
A new theory explains how fragile quantum states may be able to exist for hours or even days in our warm, wet brain. Experiments should soon test the idea.
The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.
Interesting reading via Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161102-quantum-neuroscience/
Paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003491615003243
#neuroscience #quantumbrain #research #physics #science
Thank you for the sharing Corina Marinescu. I will study your sources with great interest.
ReplyDelete...Et puis je n'aurai plus
ReplyDeleteCe phosphore un peu mou
Cerveau qui me servit
A me prévoir sans vie...
What we perceive as present is the vivid fringe of memory
ReplyDeletetinged with anticipation.
— Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature
Measuring the Increment of NOW
By G. Thomas Edwards
We cannot “live in the moment” … We live in the past!
I know, I know, I know. We have all been told over and over our entire lives that we need to live life in the moment. Plan for the future, but live in the moment for it is truly all we have. Well, I think not!
I have always been a huge believer of living life in the moment, or the now if you will. And I, like most everyone else, have done so based on the belief that the past and the future do not exist because the past has happened and is behind us, in the past tense, and thus can no longer have a physical effect on us. The other side of the coin of course, the future in all its infinite quantum glory, has yet to occur and as such we really truly have no idea where it will take or how it will present itself to us. As I said, I believed this wholeheartedly until recently.
It might be helpful if I took a moment to explain a few things first. You see some time ago I was asked in casual conversation “What is, or how do we measure the increment of now?” The question was proposed inadvertently and was meant to be a simple innocuous question that instead has grown to become a bit of an obsession, okay a full-blown obsession. I think about, and look for answers, implications and applications in just about everything that encompasses our day-to-day lives. Now, I have no intentions of taking this to the point of absurdity so as to go certifiably insane, as did Phaderus in his search of the meaning of “Quality” in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Still as it was consuming a great deal of my time normally allocated for day dreaming I thought it best to pursue in greater detail a couple of concepts that like boomerangs, kept coming back to me.
One of those boomerang ideas was Zeno's famous paradox, that is, if one were to decide on a precisely measured distance to travel and then travel half said distance, only to remeasure the new distance, the balance left to travel, and travel half that distance they would quickly discover ad infinitum, that it creates a bit of a stumbling block. That is, there will always be a balance distance that can be measured, no matter how small, and thus have the perpetual ability to be cut in half, effectively making it impossible to reach the final destination.
The second reoccurring idea or question was, how long does it take or what is the increment of time from the moment of an event, to when the brain recognizes the event, until it catalogs the event to memory? My initial research shows that the time frame for the brain to react to a stimulus is about 200 milliseconds. That includes the point of stimulus, to recognition, to physical reaction. Important and pertinent segue here, keep in mind, and this should come as no surprise, in attempting to measure the increment of NOW, different individuals process information at faster or slower speeds than others. This of course will vary from one individual to another just as multitude of computers on the Internet can have different processing speeds because they are older or newer or different brands with different processing chips, but the amazing thing, they are still capable of talking to each other. So it would seem plausible at least that the increment of NOW should be different for each individual even though we can still communicate with each other in what we perceive to be the present.
Back to Zeno and his paradox. If we apply Zeno’s equation in attempting to determine the increment of NOW, that immeasurable moment between the infinite quantum futures that have not yet occurred or even been anticipated and the past which has already occurred and is now memory we discover something incredible. You see, by the time we think something, too late, it is already the past, and Zeno’s paradox/formula is exactly why. No matter how quick our brains are, like cutting a distance in half, there will always be an increment that can divided and made smaller or quicker. It is clear that the increment of time for the passing of NOW is in effect infinitely short or quick or fast, with no limit to how quick, it is infinitely quick. That said, we find that using this infinitely decreasing increment of time is so fast that the human brain, which has speed limit, simply cannot process the information. Certainly not in terms of taking a leisurely second or two to dwell on and revel in the moment… there is no moment. Go ahead try and catch a glimpse of NOW. This effectively means if we are unable to consciously think in the amount of time available for the passage of NOW that NOW simply does not exist. Let me say it again, since the increment is smaller, faster than we can think, NOW does not exist! Yeah, I know. This means contrary to earlier beliefs, as reality must exist, that if that existence is not during the course of NOW than the only reality that can or does exist is either or both the PAST where all memories are cataloged (like data saved on a hard drive) and the quantum FUTURE where all possible outcomes lay in wait for us to choose from (a bit like an interactive DVD.)
ReplyDeleteEinstein alluded to this in his “Special Theory of Relativity.” He concluded that in relativistic models of physics there is no place for “the present” as an absolute element of reality. Einstein put it like this: “People like us, who believe in physics, know the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Even in Yoga it is believed the moment a person thinks, he or she is recalling their past experience.
So what then is this immeasurable increment, this instantaneous crossover between the future and the past we call NOW? If not an increment of time it has to be, for lack of a better word(s), a device, a machine, a processor (my favorite), that like a camera or recorder reads the chosen or collecting data from the Quantum Script (see diagram below), and instantly, quicker than instantly writes them to memory. But then how do we experience the present, that moment between when the future passes through the NOW to the past quicker then we can perceive it? I know everyone of us feels it, and experiences what seems like the existence of reality over the course of at least a second or two.
That time frame cannot be NOW, as I said, it simply does not exist, it happens too fast. It is an illusion, being in the present, I say illusion because it has already happened and thus is the past. Therefore that feeling of reality like we are existing in the moment is more like watching a prerecorded video. It is an individual sensory experience whose length of time we individually experience and is measured by the speed of that individual's brain, their Quantum Script Processors, QSP’s the NOW (see diagram below). It is a two-fold experience. First, there is the physical aspect of the moment a stimulus is created by an event, to when the brain recognizes the event, which by then already past tense, and second, the period of lingering dissipation while the brain is cataloging/writing. This would be sort of a buffer area or temporary holding tank prior to being cataloged into the memory bank. This allows us to, after the fact, in the past, to revel in and to mentally experience the moment, prior to it being written to memory. An analogy of this is when you are driving on a freeway, you see so many moving events, cars going various directions, the line on the road passing to the side and behind, clouds moving above, trees, people… all of these things happening directly in front of us. It seems as if we are in the moment making decisions, all the while experiencing all of the many moving parts to this picture. But think about it, and any given instant, everything in the frame, the picture your eyes take is now in the past. So how can we function in this none environment.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way, everyone can see the screen, the membrane I call NOW, the gathering immediately in front of them, the collecting Quantum Script, the infinite futures (see diagram below), denser than elsewhere as the more pertinent elements are attracted toward an impending event by that individual. But very much like the still unexplained phenomenon of the “Quantum Double Slit Experiment” as soon as we look at it, those elements become fixed, finite, no longer a part of the Quantum Script they instead are now being written forever to the past. And we, as I described above enjoy a brief moment while they pass through the “Awareness Buffer” (see diagram below) on their way to being written into history. A side note, it might help explain clairvoyance and psychic phenomenon, as some individuals might possess slightly different QSP’s in their brains and thus are able to see a little further beyond the surface of the NOW membrane, the screen at the gathering, the collecting data of the Quantum Script (the infinite futures) and see a higher probability of what might happen in the future.
Bottom line... I now believe our purpose in this life, this reality is to “experience” to edify our souls that we may take with us these experiences. So, forget about “Living in the Moment” it doesn’t exist, rather believe we can only truly live in the “sensation” be it wonderful or unpleasant, past, present or even future, ensuring to usurp every last drop of this precious nectar, knowledge, and store it forever to our memories that we may, when the time comes, take it with us on our journey towards enlightenment.
If we, our brains, our QSP’s are in fact reading from a binary like script that carries the infinite possible futures there must be a source, a means to transmit, to make available this data so that our QSP’s can process, make choices. That would be light. The ultimate bench mark of physics. It defies explanation while explaining everything we know… Oh the implications.
G. Thomas Edwards That slightly bloated diatribe you submit to our attention looks like a speech whose ingredients have been rehearsed many times. But of course this hasn't been all your life and you spent a significant and likely larger fraction of your time without any of it in mind. When I similarly work on objects of lasting but intermittent attention, there's a sense I am in a room of an inner building together with past and future whiles of myself sharing the same objects of attention. Most notably, there are invariants in what I think at different times, so that the self who thinks the invariant thought has no unequivocal time.
ReplyDeleteThere is a known experiment in which random number generators, based on quantum mechanics, which normally give an expected distribution of results (eg 50% true and 50% false) have had their results shifted in the course of global events: in particular the September 11 (and the tsunamis if my memory is good). The most interesting is that the disturbance started 48 hours before the event!...
ReplyDeleteBertrand Nelson Some references would be welcome; this is so outlandish that vanilla hearsay is useless.
ReplyDeleteNot to say it wouldn't be cool if true; I remember telling friends of an ominous feeling that current events were "too calm" and I was also slightly horrified when the poor people jumping to their death matched a concluding Wall-Street-averse image I'd used barely a week earlier, in a post where I chided physicists on the basis of French puns that they were a "pythagorean sect". That post ended on "the distance covered by bankers in free fall is proportional to the square of the duration of their bankruptcy".
Boris Borcic I've heard of the experiment on Discovery Science TV channel, on Through the Wormhole hosted by Morgan Freenman. usually, there is no fantasy in the content of this show and it's very up-to-date, scientifically speaking... I can search on Google the references if you prefer... I must add that I've heard of it somewhere else but I don't remember where.
ReplyDeleteBoris Borcic Google random number generator 9/11, you'll get Global Consciousness Project, there is also a reference to Princeton in the first result but I didn't take the time to check out the Google's results... It's 1 PM in Paris, the sun is shining and I have to lunch.
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - Global Consciousness Project - Wikipedia
Bertrand Nelson Bon appétit!
ReplyDeleteBoris Borcic
ReplyDeleteIndeed yes Boris, rehearsed, preconceived, and written over and over many times as the concept is as slippery and elusive as Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Which if I might add is considerably more bloated, sorry, lengthier. It is, I believe the key to understanding quantum realities. And, I have no doubt I will revisit this fascinating obsession to rewrite and fine tune many, many more times in the future. It is like a ‘word on the tip of your tongue’ the answer is right there, so very close.
G. Thomas Edwards My point was mainly that many or most of the thoughts of yours that form it, can't be assigned any particular single "now" of yours because these are many. These are long dialogues with oneself that are led like in a chamber outside time.
ReplyDelete