I’’ve heard some people say that consciousness is this wonderful property in the universe that has a predilection for the human brain. If that’s the case, then consciousness is about three pounds, and looks a little bit like grey cauliflower.
ANDREW NEWBERG
Jeff: “Nowadays you can tag quantum onto anything. A few years back it was creative: creative divorce, creative cooking. Now it’s quantum: quantum divorce, quantum cooking, quantum healing . . .” Betsy: “What is quantum cooking (laughs)?” Jeff: “I don’t know, but it sounds good, right?”
Is it any wonder that quantum is being applied everywhere? It is such a different way to view the physical universe upon which the rest is built. It seems to open the door to so many possibilities and give some answers to puzzles that have stumped humanity for millennia.
One of the most interesting applications of quantum, outside the kitchen, that is, is looking at some of those intangible aspects of our lives: consciousness (that again!), free will, intent, experience and, specifically for this chapter, quantum meets the brain!
Consciousness, the Brain, the Body
Is consciousness merely a product of the brain, an “epiphenomenon” or “emergent property” of bioelectrical activity inside our heads? Is it something that arises when enough neurons fire together, producing a sufficient level of computational complexity? If so, is the brain just a biological computer? And how are we different from machines? Could there be artificial intelligence that equals or surpasses human intelligence? Would such machines be “conscious”? Could they learn? Would they have free will?
Or is consciousness a fundamental component of the universe, independent of the brain, that can be experienced without the body, as in the thousands of documented out-of-body and near-death experiences? In those cases, a person’s body temporarily shuts down and ceases to function (on the operating table, for example) and yet their consciousness continues to remain awake to experience.
The difference between us and a rock is that human behavior as opposed to the behavior of a rock has its roots deep in the quantum mechanical level, from the individual DNA molecules in every single cell in the brain.
—John Hagelin, Ph.D.
Historically, the answers to these questions fall into one of three buckets:
• Materialism: Matter is primary; consciousness, whatever it is, is secondary. Consciousness is simply an effect of brain activity. There is no such thing as “consciousness” itself; it has no reality of its own, but is merely a product of our biology, of neural nets and electrochemical interactions.
• Dualism: Consciousness and matter are both existing realities. However, they are so different (one solid and tangible, the other abstract and intangible) that they operate in entirely distinct, unrelated realms. Descartes, in the 1600s, divided the world into res cogitans and res extensa—the realm of spirit and thought (cogitans) vs. the realm of matter and things (res extensa). The material world, including minerals, plants, animals and human beings, is all machines, governed by the absolute laws of causality. There can be no reciprocal action between the free-roaming and abstract realm of pure thought, and the dense and localized realm of matter: They are two utterly different substances.
• Idealism: Consciousness is the fundamental reality. Everything is an expression of consciousness. Alive, fluid and perpetually self-renewing, it self-expresses in a continuum of levels or layers, from the most “soft” and abstract pure consciousness through all the subtle and more “substantial” levels (quantum wave functions and particles, photons, atoms, molecules, cells, etc.) to the most solid matter. In this continuum, everything is connected and related; it is all the same stuff, manifesting in differing frequencies, vibratory levels or densities.
In both the first and second cases, consciousness is either afforded no identity or dignity or is eternally cut off from interacting with the material world. In the third view, the problem of the relationship of consciousness and the body dissolves: They are already and always related and connected; in fact, they are just two aspects of the same “thing.” This framework, although considered “extreme” by many, is not only consistent with Buddhism, the Indian Vedic tradition, and the mystics of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but it is also favored by a number of physicists we have mentioned before. And consciousness could well be the “neutral monism” of the mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, in which a common underlying entity gives rise to both physical and mental qualities.
But what are the mechanisms by which consciousness loses its pure abstractness, becomes thought, perception and feeling, and appears as electrical or chemical activity in the brain? Here are a couple of theoretical attempts to explain how this works.
Stuart Hameroff’s Vision of the Quantum Brain
“How does living matter produce subjective thoughts, feelings and emotions?” asks Hameroff, professor emeritus of the departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. “How can our brains account for phenomenal ‘experience’—the smell of jasmine, the redness of a rose or the joy of love?”
Though questions like these have occupied philosophers and thinkers for centuries, Hameroff points out that “the study of consciousness fell upon hard times through most of the 20th century, as behaviorists dominated psychology. Why study something that cannot be measured? Consciousness became a dirty word in scientific circles, eclipsed by operant conditioning paradigms, Pavlovian reflexes and other quantifiable parameters.”
A resurgence of interest in consciousness began in the 1970s. Not only were large numbers of people, especially of the ’60s generation, actively exploring the transformation of consciousness through meditation, various forms of therapy and an assortment of mind-bending chemicals, but computers made it possible to begin intensive work on artificial intelligence (AI) and to rapidly analyze data derived from electrical readings of the brain (EEG and other measures).
In the 1980s and ’90s, numerous prominent scientists jumped on the bandwagon and produced books and theories championing the brain as a magnificent computer, as well as the view that, as Hameroff states it, “consciousness had something to do with the mysteries of quantum mechanics.”
Then Hameroff came in contact with the work of Sir Roger Penrose, the renowned British mathematician and physicist.
Penrose-Hameroff “OR” Theory of Consciousness
Penrose proposed that consciousness comes about when superpositions of neurons within the brain reach a certain threshold and then spontaneously collapse. (This is similar to the collapse of the wave function due to observation, bringing a vast array of possibilities down to a localized point value. The difference is that here the superposition collapses of its own accord due to quantum gravity effects.) According to Penrose, what he called “objective reductions” are intrinsic to the way consciousness operates. These “ORs” convert multiple possibilities at the preconscious, unconscious or subconscious level to definite perceptions or choices on the conscious level, like considering pizza, sushi or pad thai (all in superposition) and then selecting one (collapse or reduction). Hameroff suggested the mechanism by which this could take place, and together he and Penrose formulated their theory.
A number of scientists are currently looking into the proposition that memories are not actually stored in the brain. It has been found that if you remove part of the brain where a memory appeared to be located, the memory may still persist! Where is it stored? Perhaps somewhere at the Planck scale, or what some people might call “the akashic records.” The brain might just serve as an instrument to pull the memories out of the universe. It might be the local storage, the local disk for the cosmic hard drive where all memories are stored.
Central to the way this collapse, or OR, takes place are tiny microtubules, hollow, strawlike structures within every cell, including neurons. Once thought of as merely the cytoskeleton or scaffolding of the cell, microtubules were found to display extraordinary intelligence and self-organizing ability. They serve as the cell’s nervous and circulatory system, transport materials and organize the cell’s shape and motion. They interact with their “neighbors” to process and communicate information, and can organize neighboring cells into a unified, coherent whole. In neurons, microtubules also set up and regulate synaptic connections and are involved in the release of neurotransmitters. As Dr. Hameroff says, “They are everywhere, and seem to organize almost everything.”
The structural changes and information processing and communication among the microtubules, within the neurons of the brain, are directly influential “one level up,” on the organization of neurons into the networks called “neuronets.” But the microtubules themselves are affected from deep within their own structure by a quantum phenomenon: The proteins of which they are made respond to signals from an internal quantum computer consisting of single electrons. Dr. Hameroff explains: “These quantum mechanical forces in the pockets inside proteins control the conformational shape of the protein. And that, in turn, controls the actions of the neurons, and the muscles, and our behavior. So, proteins changing their shape is the amplification point between the quantum world and our affecting the classical world in everything that mankind does, good and bad.”
Hameroff continues that it’s the spontaneous collapse (OR) of these microtubules, roughly forty times a second, that gives “a moment of consciousness.” Our consciousness is not continuous, but a sequence of “ah-ha moments.” He says, “Consciousness kind of ratchets through space time, and that consciousness is a sequence of now moments: now, now, now . . .”
Where Does Consciousness Happen?
What is the meeting point between the intangible realm of thought and awareness that constitutes our internal subjective experience and the electrically charged biochemical soup1 of the brain?
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1 There it is: quantum cooking.
“I’m not an idealist, like Bishop Berkeley or Hindu approaches,” says Dr. Hameroff, “in which consciousness is all there is. Nor am I a ‘Copenhagenist’ in which consciousness causes collapse, and chooses reality from a number of possibilities. But somewhere in between. Consciousness exists on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds. I think more like a quantum Buddhist, in that there is a universal proto-conscious mind which we access, and which can influence us. But it actually exists at the funda-mental level of the universe, at the Planck scale.”
The Planck scale has not been introduced, but it is an important aspect of the Penrose–Hameroff theory. The Planck scale (after the quantum physicist Max Planck) is the smallest distance that can be defined. At 10-33 centimeters, it is 10 trillion trillion times (no, that’s not a typo) smaller than a hydrogen atom! According to Hameroff, this fundamental level of the universe . . .
is a vast storehouse of truth, ethical and aesthetic values, and precursors of conscious experience, ready to influence our every conscious perception and choice. We are connected to the universe, and entangled with everyone else through this omniscient omnipresence, a sea of feelings and subjectivity. If we are mindful and not acting reflexively or rashly, our choices can be divinely guided. Penrose avoids any spiritual implication of his ideas, but they are inescapable. Quantum computations in our brains connect our consciousness to the “funda-mental” universe.
There is no place for true randomness in deterministic classical dynamics, and without some source of randomness there are no options. . . . The only known source of perfect freedom of action resides in the quantum nature of matter.
—Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
Free Will and Chinese Boxes
Satinover, like Stuart Hameroff, a physician steeped in quantum mechanics, has written a book called The Quantum Brain: The Search for Freedom and the Next Generation of Man. And while he is reluctant to slap the “Q” word (quantum) on the culinary arts, Satinover has come up with a rigorous mathematical argument that shows that “the workings of the nervous system and the particular way that it implements quantum effects—very distinct, specific ways, not general, not fuzzy, not imprecise—absolutely does open the door for free will being a possibility that does not violate modern scientific tenets.” Satinover’s theme is directly related to the layered structure described above. It is that the non-determinism of the quantum level of existence, the randomness and the fact that probability rather than absolute certainty governs quantum reality, gives us the only possibility for free will.
Ultimately, what we’d like to [determine] is the physics of consciousness. What is consciousness? Where does it come from? What are the origins of consciousness? What are the limits of human potential? We’re in a position to actually answer that now, I believe, although there’s certainly not a consensus yet in the scientific community about that. You’ve asked the questions in the first movie; now we’re on the verge of being able to answer those questions.
—John Hagelin, Ph.D.
On the macro level, the large-scale level of classical physics, all events, from the orbits of planets to the movements of molecules, are mechanical and determined by precise mathematical laws. Thus, it is only if the randomness of the quantum level could somehow be relevant on the macro level that choice and free will might be possible.
“At the level of the brain,” says Satinover, the neural networks “produce a global intelligence that’s associated with the brain as a whole. But then when you look at individual neurons, the interior of the neurons is a different physical implementation of the same principle. And, in fact, at every scale as you go down, like Chinese boxes nested the one in the other, each individual processing element at one scale can be shown to be composed of innumerable smaller processing elements within it.”
Starting at the “lowest” or smallest scale, the process whereby proteins fold—the process Stuart Hameroff described as operating within the microtubule—“obeys essentially the same mathematically self-organizing dynamic as how a neural network processes information. So, the folding of a protein is mathematically identical to the generation of a thought, or the solving of a problem. And that’s really where the notion of the quantum brain comes in. Not that the brain as a whole entity is a quantum entity, but rather that quantum effects at the lowest level are not only capable of, but of necessity are amplified upward because of this nested Chinese box arrangement of the nervous system. . . . It’s through a very particular kind of neighbor-to-neighbor interaction amongst the neurons that global intelligence, at the level of the brain as a whole, emerges.”
According to this theory, the brain has in fact been designed to magnify these quantum effects and project them “upward” to larger and larger processing elements, until it reaches the level of the brain.
In short, says Satinover, “Quantum mechanics allows for the intangible phenomenon of freedom to be woven into human nature. . . . The entire operation of the human brain is underpinned by quantum uncertainty.” This is because “at every scale, from the cortex down to individual proteins,” the brain “functions as a parallel processor. . . . These processes form a nested hierarchy, an entire parallel computer at one scale being but a processing element in the next larger one.”
Intention and Quantum Zeno
The investigations into mind/matter centered, at least on the mind side, around the role of intention—that act, allowed by free will, that chooses the effect that is to be observed in the outside world. And although there is evidence that intention is the key, the how that key is turned is up for grabs.
Henry Stapp, a theoretical physicist, has brought the mathematical formalism of von Neumann’s Theory of Quantum Mechanics into this area of study. In von Neumann’s theory, there are 3 processes in observation (see “Observer”). The first is posing the question. This is where it gets interesting. . . .
The Zeno Effect is that old paradox that if the rabbit chasing the turtle closes by half every time the distance between it and the turtle, it will never reach the turtle.
According to Dr. Stapp:
An important feature of the dynamical rules of quantum theory is this: Suppose a process 1 event that leads to a “Yes” outcome is followed by a rapid sequence of very similar process 1 events. That is, suppose a sequence of very similar intentional acts is performed, and that the events in this sequence occur in very rapid succession.
Then the dynamical rules of quantum theory entail that the sequence of outcomes will, with high probability, all be “Yes”: The “Yes” state will, with high probability, be held approximately in place by the rapid succession of intentional acts. By virtue of the quantum laws of motion, a strong intention, manifested by the high rapidity of the similar intentional acts, will tend to hold in place the associated template for action.
The timings of the process 1 actions are controlled by the “free choices” on the part of the agent. If we add to the von Neumann rules the assumption that the rapidity of these similar process 1 actions can be increased by mental effort, then we obtain, as a rigorous mathematical consequence of the basic dynamical laws of quantum mechanics described by von Neumann, a potentially powerful effect of mental effort on brain activity!
This “holding-in-place” effect is called the Quantum Zeno Effect. This appellation was used by the physicists E.C.G. Sudarshan and R. Misra.
What this says is that by continually holding the same intention over and over and over, by posing the same question to the universe over and over and over, we change the quantum probability away from randomness. Is this what happened when 100 million people were holding the question guilty/not guilty for O.J.’s trial? Or when one person is holding “more 1’s than 0’s”?
So, if you wanted to look at it poetically, you would say that human beings seem to be designed to maximize the freedom that’s available in their material structure to a degree which mimics the creation of the universe itself.
—Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
But Dr. Stapp thinks that this phenomenon may show how the insubstantial “mind” controls the very substantial brain: “Quantum mechanics contains a specific mechanism that in principle allows mental effort to hold at bay strong forces arising from the mechanical side of nature, and allows mental intent to influence brain processes.”
Quantum Cooking After All
So far we have the experience of consciousness in the brain arising from spontaneous collapse of the wave function in the microtubules. Within this consciousness exists the option of free will, or choice, due to the amplified upward Chinese box arrangement of quantum events. Based on exercising that free will, we hold a given outcome in our brains and re-pose that question arbitrarily fast (which seems continuous like “holding,” but is really a sequence of now moments) to effect the probabilities of the quantum world.
Surely that is a veritable stew of quantum ideas, all thrown together to produce a slice of reality.
Or, from the Quantum Cookbook:
• Take a few trillion microtubules, allow to self collapse into an (objective) reduction sauce.
• As quantum uncertainty bubbles up from the bottom of the (brain) pan, separate out one bubble from the array of (possible) bubbles.
• Repeatedly hold this bubble over the flame of consciousness until baked solid (collapsed reality).
• Perceive to taste. Oops, that’s taste to perceive. . . .
Ponder These for a While . . .
• Given the notion of questions (process 1) being an important element in collapse (process 3), does this explain anything to you about the importance of Great Questions?
• Why do you think we keep asking so many?