IUBio

Quantum effects in the brain

Dale A Trynor dalet at nbnet.nb.ca
Tue Jan 7 22:53:42 EST 2003


"Richard S. Norman" wrote:

> On 7 Jan 2003 15:58:32 -0800, ukcomplaint at lycos.com (UKComplaint)
> wrote:
>
> >Physicist Henry Margenau (quoted by Sir John Eccles) states that the
> >components of the brain 'are small enough to be governed by
> >probabilistic quantum laws' and are 'always poised for a multitude of
> >possible changes, each with a definite probability'.
> >
> >Is Margenau's view (that actions in the brain might be subject to
> >quantum effects) generally accepted withnin science?
> >
> >N.B. The blurb for the forthcoming Quantum Mind 2003 Conference on
> >Consciousness, Quantum Physics and the Brain to be hosted by the
> >University of Arizona states "recent experimental evidence suggests
> >quantum nonlocality occurring in conscious and subconscious brain
> >function, and functional quantum processes in molecular biology are
> >becoming more and more apparent."

[snip, had to try and snip something and its still too long]

> Planck's constant is 7 x 10 ^^-34 J s.  That corresponds to
> about 10^^-13 kcal sec/mol (compare with reactions measured
> in kcal/mol) or to 4 x 10^^-15 eV s (compare with one ion moving
> across the membrane at 0.1 eV).  Of course you have to account for
> event duration or frequency to make the units comparable, but still
> most neural activity really does occur at the macroscopic, classical
> level.

Dale Trynor wrote:
I hope I am forgiven here for making up terminology as needed. I am also
probably out of date and risk having re inventing the weal. Assuming that
such a field as soul mechanics becomes a reality, how could one explain a
phenomenon with no energy of its own also having the ability to influence
the working of a mind that requires energy for decision making. Its also
to be remembered that much of the mind works fine perfectly deterministic,
after all we prefer that our vision reflects what we see and not what we
dream up. However anything that requires a free choice is quite a
different mater and must have cells that have this random property to
them.

I have long come to the conclusion that chaos may be essential,  For
example if one has 3 outputs randomly selected then no energy becomes
required in making it become selective. In this way any soul quanta could
become a chaotic attractor and so influence outcomes without the
requirement for an energy source. This is the very thing that computers
are not good at.
I risk sounding even more stooped than I am, but what are the chances that
the same chaotic flapping of the wings of a chicken when its head is
chopped off might also be based on a similar type of chaos as is also
essential to the function of a mind.

>
>
> There is no need to search for quantal activity to understand what we
> really do observe in the brain.  Yes, there are still a lot of things
> we don't understand about brain activity, but most neurobiologists
> seem to think that this does not seem to be a fruitful direction to
> look, Penrose and microtubules notwithstanding.

I believe that in time, what I have taken liberty to call soul mechanics
will be shown to have similarities to quantum mechanics but that
similarities do not necessarily require them to be the same thing. Some
time ago I did some posts looking at the idea of a stereo lithographic
method of recreating a mind as it would allow one to recreate one while
only being required to understand how the individual cells worked.
Potentially a big subject, especially if one dares to consider wanting to
examine many of the possibilities on how to do this, so I will restrain
myself here. Such a method would eliminate the requirement of
understanding how it was wired. One of the possible outcomes of such
research would be where one could recreate a mind with a vastly larger
scale that's also better for study and is easier to re create. Obviously
if the mind is dependent on quantum theory as believed then such changes
in scale would render it unable to operate while ones that were done to
scale would work.

I would not be surprised if soul quanta's are used by the brain as a
communications medium of its own. I would also not be surprised if such
peculiar possibilities as one being able to measure its volume but not its
center and or its center but not its volume as in a similar related
Heisenberg uncertainty type of thing yet to be discovered.

Perhaps one of the more interesting arguments for the complexity of the
human mind being the most complex organ its to be noted the fantastically
meager amount of genetic code to create one puts this into question.
For example the human genome is about 3 billion base units but only 3% can
be clamed to do anything reducing to 90 million. Of this only I believe it
was 25% of this remainder is used to create the brain reduces this again
to 22.5 million. Converting the for base units so they can be expressed in
binary and you need 2 bits each that can be used to address the 4 base
units. Because a byte is 8 bits rather than just the 2 we can reduce the
22.5 million to equal about 6 megabytes when in its binary equivalent. Yes
that's right I have had printer drivers have been about that large.

If I have missed any new terminology's I am not surprised its been a few
years sense I have read up on this. Besides I will bet its been covered in
information theory and I simply was unaware of it all and in that case
please will someone help inform me. But if not, it seams appropriate to
differentiate such things as adapted complexity, fundamental complexity,
repetitive complexity and etceteras when describing the complexity of the
mind, as I have illustrated by the one example above. So has anything been
done along these lines?. It could prove that even a parrots brain may
match a humans in something I suppose you could call origin or DNA source
complexity. Any opinions or information on this.
www.alternatescience.com




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