Archive 3

27/01/2010
ADHESIVE MOLECULES AND CONTROL OF THE CORTICAL QUANTUM ENTANGLED NETWORK
In a cogprints paper (Danko Georgiev 2) Georgiev proposes a process by which macroscopic quantum coherence could extend between neurons, and by involving a large number of neurons could provide a solution to the binding problem. This is an alternative proposition to the Hameroff idea that quantum coherence extends across neuronal assembles via dendritic gap junctions. Georgiev also thinks that quantum coherence arises from microtubules, although in a different way from Hameroff. From the microtubules, it is suggested that coherence continues through presynaptic scaffold proteins to the synapses. The neurexin-neuroligin complex, which is situated in the synaptic cleft, but which has C-termini extending into both the pre and post synaptic areas of neurons, is proposed to provide a bridge for quantum coherence between neurons. This macroscopic quantum entanglement could extend over a large number of neurons involved with different modalities and thus represent a solution to the binding problem.

23/01/2010
CONSCIOUSNESS NOT YET EXPLAINED
Ray Tallis (see Philosophy 3) attacks the latest fad in consciousness studies, which is the believe that ever more accurate scans of the neural correlates of consciousness will tell us what consciousness actually is. The idea that finding correlations will amount to an explanation is something that has crept up on consciousness studies. In the 1990s, it used to be clearly understood that correlation was not identity. Thunder and lightning are correlated, but thunder is not the same physical thing as lightning. However, since Crick and Koch encouraged researchers to concentrate on the correlates of consciousness, somehow the basically illogical and even magical idea that correlates of consciousness are necessarily the same thing as consciousness has been allowed to edge its way into consciousness studies.

Tallis is also dissatisfied with the approach of mainstream neuroscience and its philosophical under-labourers to the issues of the self and freewill. The mainstream denounces these notions as non-existent or illusions. Tallis takes effectively the view that declaring the data that they have been called on to explain (self and conscious will) to be non-existent, does not constitute an explanation, and therefore something must be missing from neuroscience's approach.

In the end it turns out that Tallis is a 'mysterian' or 'new mysterian'. Science is concerned with objective measurement abstracted away from subjective bias, while consciousness is subjectivity, and therefore science can never explained consciousness. Tallis does not seem to be a dualist, so this leaves us in a limbo with no explanation for consciousness at all. This seems a rather defeatist position. If we're not dualists, we ought to accept consciousness as part of the physical universe, which should ultimately be capable of being explained by physics.

23/01/2010
NEUROLIGINS & NEUREXINS
Neurologins and neurexins assume importance in an alternative to Hameroff's suggestions for widespread quantum coherence. These are cell adhesion molecules that are thought to bind to one another, and to interact with proteins within neurons. They connect the presynaptic area of one neuron to the postsynaptic area of another, mediate signalling across the synaptic cleft, and specify synaptic functions and the properties of neural circuits. The shape of the neurexin-neuroligin complex suggests that it forms an interaction layer in the synaptic cleft, with C-terminals emerging from the complex, on opposite sides of the synaptic cleft. Neurexins come in many isoforms, and it is suggested that these could code for different interactions at the synapses. With respect to quantum consciousness, it has been suggested that coherence arising around microtubules might pass through presynaptic scaffold proteins and thence through neurexins and neuroligins to neighbouring neurons, which could allow a whole neuronal assembly to become coherent.

21/01/2010:
DAVID ROSE REVISITED
I looked at Rose's book on consciousness some months ago. However, the reason for his acute problem with 'fundamental' and quantum theories of consciousness, and for his over emphasis on the question of levels, in fact lies in a category error, common enough in consciousness studies, as between an information processing system as such and consciousness. Because he seems only to think in terms of total neural networks and their associated synapses and neurotransmitters, he can not conceive possibility of consciousness arising at the sub-neuronal level. Despite his reductionist slant, he seems to miss the point of the way reductionist science is done. The underlying force of an emergent property such as the liquidity of water does not have to be understood in terms of the totality of the water, because it derives from electric charge at the lowest level, the level of electrons.

13/01/2010

BIOPHYSICS OF NEURONAL MICROTUBULES
This 2004 paper, (see: Danko Geoergiev 2) in Biomedical Reviews is possibly the clearest account of Geogiev's view of microtubules as quantum information processors. Amino acid 'tails' projecting 4-5 nanometres from the surface of microtubules play a key role in this theory. The tails interact with the electric field, with water molecules, and with ions bound to the microtubular surface, to produce solitons (solitary quantum waves that, even in collisions with other waves, retain their shape and velocity). Collisions of these solitons are suggested to act as logic gates, and the conformation of the tubulin tails controls microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) and motor proteins, which in turn could constitute a computational output. It is also suggested that tubulin tails could regulate the output of neurotransmitters from synapses via presynaptic scaffold proteins. This would bring microtubules centre stage, within the conventional model of the brain's information processing. One advantage of this model is that it does not require the shielding from decoherence envisaged in the better known Hameroff version of microtubule quantum processing, because the process suggested could occur within the normal time to decoherence in brain conditions.

On the basis of a mathematical model developed by the quantum consciousness researchers Jibu & Yasue, the authors claim to show that signals from the local electric field could govern the conformation of the tubulin tails. These tails are negatively charged, and the study predicts that they would attract positive ions, and form a Debye layer. It is suggested that the projecting tubulin tails plus hydration shells (water molecules orientated by ions) around the tails could make the microtubules very sensitive to their environment. Further, the interaction between the tubulin tails and the electric field could induce conformational waves in the tubulin tails. Mathematical modelling suggests the feasibility of solitons. Collisions of these and resulting shifts along the microtubule could act as logic gates. Studies show binding between tubulin tails and MAPs and motor proteins. Tubulin tail contact with MAPs, motor proteins and presynaptic scaffold proteins could allow computational output.

Control of synapses by microtubules is another, if more speculative possibility opened up by this paper. The binding of tubulin tails with motor proteins implies regulation of the flow of vesicles and neurotransmitters to synapses. It is further suggested that tubulin tail conformations could control the presynaptic scaffold proteins that organise synapses, and regulate the release of neurotransmitters. Studies show a direct interaction with synaptotagmin-1, a protein that offsets the destabilising influence of Ca2+ ions at axon terminals. It is stressed that the relationship between axon spikes and synaptic firing is very variable, and this makes additional tuning by microtubules feasible.

10/01/2010:

WHY PHYSICALISM ENTAILS PANPSYCHISM
The philosopher Galen Strawson argues for a form of panpsychism rather than quantum consciousness. (see: Other Quantum 5). However, his argument as to the difficulty of extracting consciousness from physical matter is similar to many of the arguments for considering a quantum solution for consciousness. Further, some versions of quantum consciousness provide effective answers to the more forcible arguments against panpsychism. Firstly, they can deal with the lack of any apparent experiental qualities in either fundamental particles or larger scale inanimate matter. The quanta can be seen as proto-experiental, not conscious in themselves, but having the potential, in particular circumstances to give rise to consciousness. Secondly, some versions of quantum consciousness get over the problem of how a very large number of fundamental particles could combine into a conscious mind, by proposing the existence of macroscopic quantum features in the brain.

Strawson criticises mainstream thinkers, including Dennett, for being closet Cartesians, in that they have an underlying assumption that consciousness is not physical. Strawson views the whole universe as physical. Consciousness is seen as the best known fact about ourselves. Its existence cannot therefore be denied, and as it exists, and everything is physical, consciousness must be physical. Consciousness arises when physical matter is put together in a particular way in brains. For conscious experience to arise from physical matter, it is argued that physical matter must have some of the experiental about it. He is not impressed by the concept of consciousness as an emergent property. In looking at the classic example of the liquidity of water as an emergent property, he points out that this is a function of attractions between electric dipoles, but no analogous underling reason for the emergence of consciousness is available.

06/01/2010: TUBULIN 'TAILS': The latest review takes a look at another paper by Danko Georgiev, 'Dissipationless waves for information transfer in neurobiology'. This is mainly an examination of the 'tails' attached to each unit of tubulin in a microtubule. It is Georgiev's contention that these tails play a key role in information processing and possibly consciousness within neurons. The tails, which are 4-5 nanometres long, are extremely sensitive to environmental conditions and local electric fields. They are suggested to have many possible conformations, to modulate the action of motor proteins, attach to microtubule associated proteins, and to microtubule anchored enzymes. It is suggested that ordered water molecules on the microtubule surface interact with the tubulin tails and the local electromagnetic field to produce long-range correlations. The paper also suggests the possibility of a link between this aspect of the microtubules and synaptic vesicles via the presynaptic protein scaffold.

02/01/2010: The first review of the new year looks at 'Consciousness - The Science of Subjectivity' by Antii Revonsuo of Skovde University in Sweden. This book is useful in providing clear expositions and criticisms of a wide range of mainstream consciousness theories. Revonsuo emphasises the distinction between theories of consciousness that concentrate on subjective experience and qualia, and theories that view consciousness as related to information processing. He is particularly critical of theories that only explain information processing in the brain, and deny or avoid subjective experience and qualia. He is also not afraid to criticise leading consciousness study figures, such as Dennett.

23/12/2009: A new category has been added under Quantum Mind Theories, which covers the models put forward by Danko Georgiev. This is at root based on Penrose's objective reduction to arrive at consciousness, but proposes different quantum structures within the neuron that allow shorter times to decoherence that do not conflict with Tegmark's calculations. A further review has also been added with the new category, discussing the downstream influence of microtubular solitons on presynaptic proteins and synaptic firing.

21/12/2009: The latest review covers a further paper by Danko Georgiev outlining the possibility of solitary wave quanta propagating along the microtubules as a result of interaction between the electric dipoles of structured water and the projecting tubulin 'tails' of the microtubules. This is suggested to allow interaction between microtubules and synapses.

17/12/2009: CLIMATEGATE: I don't wish to discuss the details of this particular scandal, nor the rights and wrongs of climate monitoring, but the allegations of manipulation of publications and data presentation and bullying of those who do not toe the line has a sadly familiar ring for anyone familiar with the ridicule, aggression and cold shouldering of non-conforming data or ideas that characterises much of consciousness studies and particularly its approach or lack of it to quantum consciousness theories. How far have we drifted from the clarity of thought that first emerged in ancient Greece and resurfaced in early modern times, and what this portend for the future of science?

16/12/09: The latest review published under Key Articles 5 is a synthesis of two papers by Danko Georgiev, who is one of the few researchers actively investigating consciousness relative to quantum activity in neurons. He disagrees with Hameroff's model in a number of respects, including the function of gap junctions. Instead, he proposes a mechanism based on quantum brain dynamics ideas developed by Jibu and Yasue and also Vitiello. However, despite rejecting some of Hameroff's neural mechanisms, he still appears to rely on Penrose's concept of objective reduction of macroscopic coherence in the brain, to give access to consciousness/understanding at the fundamental spacetime level. His approach has the advantage of needing quantum coherence to be sustained for a shorter time than Tegmark's calculated 10^-13 for quantum decoherence in the brain, thus, if his scheme is feasible, removing the most forceful argument against quantum consciousness.

08/12/09: LIBET and SOON EXPERIMENTS: An online paper by Alexander Batthyany argues against the mainstream view that experiments by Libet refute the existence of freewill. The author distinguishes between, on the one hand, actions and intentions that appear to arise from the conscious will, and on the other urges or desires, such as hunger that arise spontaneously, and are passive in the sense of being without any feeling of deriving from the conscious will. The author argues that the actions required of subjects in the Libet experiments and also the more recent experiments by Soon, C.S. depend on passive-type urges, and are therefore invalid as a basis for the refutation of freewill.

07/12/09: INTROSPECTION: A paper by Claire Petitmengin and Michel Bitbol of the Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee, Paris, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, provides a new twist to the long running dispute over the validity of introspective reports. The argument against taking note of introspective reports is that they are frequently wrong, reporting things that are not there, failing to report things that are there, and misrepresenting even those things that are correctly perceived. The researchers mention a favourite of popular consciousness books, a woman in a gorilla suit unnoticed by people playing a ball game. However, they argue that these failures to accurately register external stimuli are actually irrelevant. Introspection is about what the subject is actually experiencing, and there is no requirement for this to have a particular correspondence to the external world.

04/12/09: The latest summary/review deals with Joseph LeDoux's book, 'Synaptic Self'. This book provides a good discussion of brain plasticity and neuron processes with respect to the instantiation of memory. There is also an interesting account of the relationship between working memory and executive functions in the prefrontal and emotional processing within the brain/body. However, as with other neuroscience books of this kind, the attempt to extend the discussion to include consciousness fails. Consciousness seems to mainly be given a circumscribed role within working memory, and even here there is no attempt to suggest how it arises in any part of the brain, or how it does anything that could not just as well be done by unconscious processing. The use of the word 'self' in the title of the book seems to be something of a misnomer, as there is little attempt to describe the self or to distinguish it from consciousness.

27/11/09: The latest summary/review deals with a paper by Ishizaki and Fleming on quantum coherence at physiological temperatures in photosynthetic protein. This somewhat extends the position of Engel et al (2007), which dealt with coherence in photosynthetic proteins at low temperatures. The impossibility of functionally relevant quantum coherence in biological matter with a temperature of 300 Kelvin has been a central plank of the argument against quantum consciousness ideas. Ishizaki and Fleming's study suggests that coherence could still persist for a functionally relevant period of time at 300 K and given particular assumptions about phonon relaxation for almost as long as the times observed by Engel et al at lower temperatures.

20/11/09: The suggested reading list has been moved from the home page to Introduction 3: Reading List. A number of journal papers have been added to supplement the suggested books.

19/11/09: SEEING RED: This book by Nicholas Humphrey is our latest summary and review. Humphrey's main position is that qualiasensation and information/perception are separate systems in the brain, with qualia cut off in a passive bubble, little involved with the mainstream functioning of the brain. Humphrey presents four main arguments for this position. The argument given most prominence is the condition of blindsight, where patients have no conscious awareness of vision in part of their visual field, but can guess the position, colour etc. of objects at significantly above chance. Humphreys wants us to view blindsight as the product of a system that handles all information/perception in the brain, while qualia/sensations are relegated to a sideshow. The problem with this is the very limited utility of blindsight. Patients are not aware they have it, until urged into guessing by researchers. Their knowledge is better than chance but not the same as normal vision, and they do not appear to make a lot of use of blindsight, even when they are aware of it.

Humphrey refers to a condition called metamorphopsia resulting from damage to the parietal cortex, in which the visual fields are in flux, swelling, contracting and changing. Despite this patients are able to negotiate the world. Again this is supposed to support the idea of a different path for sensation and perception, but it appears much simpler to assume an adaptive ability to adjust within a single pathway. This latter is probably more adaptive in tying up less energy, and does not require us to hypothesise a more complex system, the physical basis of which has not been discovered.

Humphrey takes a similar approach to the changed and heightened perceptions produced by mind altering drugs. Sensation and perception are supposed to be on different pathways. However, it is much simpler to assume the chemicals acting on receptors in one system produces these changes. To go down Humphrey's path would make it necessary to assume a different pathway or the complexity of two different sets of receptors on the same neurons.

Humphreys last main argument is from sensory substitution, which is an attempt to help blind patients by transducing visual signals into auditory or tactile signals. The result, judging by patient reports, sounds rather like synaesthesia, with one patient 'seeing' his wife as 'a sort of squishy sound.' Humphreys would have this as a separation of sensation and information, but it sounds much more like a mixture of modalities.

Aspects of the book are interesting, but at the end of the day it reads as one more attempt to bend the evidence into a denial of the significance of qualia or the possible efficacy of freewill.

12/11/09: BRAIN COHERENCE AND ENTANGLEMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY: The debate over quantum coherence and entanglement in the brain and their possible role in consciousness may have been moved into a new stage by the discovery that quantum coherence has a functional role in the transfer of energy within proteins, which are the basic building blocks of living cells (Engel et al, Nature, 2007). Most importantly, this discovery somewhat undermines the central argument against quantum consciousness, which has been the claimed impossibility of quantum coherence being sustained for any useful length of time in biological matter. At the same time, it moves the discussion of what sort of coherent features could support consciousness on from a phase of more or less pure theorising, to a phase in which ideas can be related to features that have been shown to exist in biological matter.

In the nearly three years since Engels published his study in Nature, there has been almost no discussion of the possible significance of this finding in relation to consciousness. Anyone familiar with mainstream consciosness studies during the last ten years, where the very mention of quantum consciousness produces a braying chorus of 'fringe' and 'pseudoscience', will not be surprised by the absence of constructive comment from that direction. Engel and other researchers in this field are not involved in consciousness research as such. More disappointing, however, is the relative lack of discussion within the limited realm of quantum consciousness studies.

I am reluctant to cross the line from merely commenting on studies, to making more or less original contributions, but confronted with an effective research vacuum, I feel forced to do this to some degree. In models of quantum consciousness that relates to Penrose's objective reduction (OR), in which the self collapse of quanta that have not interacted with the environment is proposed to give access to the fundamental level of spacetime, the time to collapse of any quantum feature in the brain is important, because the collapse time needs to be within a scale that could be useful in neural processing. A single quanta might take millions of years to decohere, but a significant amount of entangled particles might fall within a plausible time frame.

The Engel et al study showed that energy transfer within photosynthetic proteins (chromophores) depended on the spatially extended properties of the wave function. Engel pointed out that the use of coherence was adaptive, because it allows the sampling of a vast number of different routes, in order to select the most efficient one. Engel views the system as performing a single quantum computation, sensing many states simultaneously, and selecting the correct answer. This process is analogous to Grover's algorithm. The involvement of quantum coherence explains the extreme efficiency of the system. In particular the 660 femtosecond time to collapse was nearly three times as long as predicted by traditional models, suggesting that the protein could protect coherence, thus making it more feasible that there could be a time to collapse useful in consciousness. Engel also considers the possibility that non-local entanglement is involved in quantum activity within the chromophores. Engel says that to account for the unexpectedly long-lived coherence, it is necessary to accept that the protein has an active role in decoherence.

In 2009 Sarovar et al followed up Engels paper with a discussion of possible quantum entanglement in photosynthetic complexes. Entanglement involves the possibility of a large number of particles acting as a single quantum feature, and having a time to objective reduction that would have some bearing on neural processes. Modelling of the system showed that entanglement would rapidly decrease to zero, but then resurge at the end of about 600 femtoseconds. Entanglement could in fact survive for considerably longer than coherence at 5 picoseconds at 77 Kelvin and two picoseconds at room temperature. The authors regard this as a remarkable length of time under biological conditions. Other studies tend to confirm the existence of picosecond coherence in living matter, a timescale which is approaching the area of the 10-15 picosecond timescale that dominates in much of protein and enzyme processing.

Following these and other recent papers, the debate on quantum coherence and entanglement in living matter has moved on to a new stage. We now have definite evidence of functional quantum coherence in living matter, and also modeling that makes it likely that there is also quantum entanglement in biological tissues. In looking for a mechanism for quantum consciousness, the principle of Occam's razor suggests that we should work with existing evidence, rather than more speculative possibilities. In the present state of knowledge, the findings relative to photosynthetic protein appear to be a more promising basis for study than older but more speculative models. Previous models have suggested a direct linkage to such features as Libet's half second, the gamma synchrony or the underlying processing of proteins and enzymes. There is no direct link here, although once established within protein it is feasible to suppose a widespread influence on the system.

05/11/09: In our latest addition (under Other Quantum 4), we look at a hybrid theory proposed by Danko Georgiev of the University of Kanazawa. He accepts Penrose's idea of objective reduction, but rejects Hameroff's model, in favour of Bose-Einstein condensates reaching quantum coherence in 10-15 picoseconds, compared to 25 ms in the Hameroff version. This is a big difference, although Georgiev's time to decoherence is still orders of magnitude slower than the 660 femtoseconds, which provides coherence that is functional for energy transport in photosynthetic protein. The question of what sort of periods of coherence are capable of being linked to neural processes would look to repay more study.

03/11/09: The latest addition to summaries and reviews is Solomon Feferman's paper entitled Penrose's Godelian argument. Feferman has a common cause with Penrose in opposing the dominant computational model of mind, and considering that human thought, and in particular mathematical thought, is not achieved by the mechanical application of algorithms, but rather by trial-and-error, insight and inspiration, in a process that machines will never share with humans. His criticism of Penrose applies mainly to him extending his argument too far in areas such as mathematical soundness and consistency, and thus providing ammunition for the computational-mind camp.

02/11/09: TIME, CONSCIOUSNESS & QUANTUM THEORY: The most relevant parts of the argument against quantum theories of consciousness is to do with the question of whether the speed of decoherence in the brain would be too great for quantum features to be relevant to neural processing. The Penrose/Hameroff theory was a particular target for these criticisms, because the theory proposed what everyone seemed to agree was an ambitious time to collapse of 25 ms. This was an attractive aspect of the theory, if it could be substantiated, because it linked to the 40 Hz gamma synchrony. This is recognised as a correlate of consciousness even in classical neuroscience, although somewhat downplayed, since it was discovered that the synchrony was tied to dendritic activity rather than axonal spiking. The disadvantage has been that a direct link from quantum activity to gamma synchrony has hobbled discussion of the Penrose/Hameroff theory by making it so vulnerable to decoherence.

In the last two years, the question of quantum coherence in biological matter has been moved to a new stage by Engel et al (2007) and related papers, although mainstream consciousness studies is almost totally unaware of this development. The paper showed that energy transfer in photosynthetic protein depended on the quantum activity of electrons in the protein. This appears to demonstrate that coherence sometimes plays a functional role in biological matter. On the other hand, it is not altogether friendly to Hameroff's approach, since coherence according to Engel's observations only lasts for 660 femto seconds, 11 or 12 orders of magnitude smaller than the 25 ms proposed by Hameroff. However, this is not the whole picture. Classical models of photosynthetic protein suggested that electrons would decohere in 250 femto seconds. The paper does not offer any particular reason for the near tripling of the time to decoherence. However, it is perhaps not entirely unreasonable to suggest that the difference between the expected 250 femto seconds and the experimentally observed 660 femto second time to collapse could reflect shielding from the environment sufficient to allow objective reduction. Such a theory might still require some intermediate process to link it to the 40 Hz timescale of the consciousness correlated gamma synchrony.

10/09: I have added a short summary, taken from various sources, of Godel First Incompleteness Theorem. This is a long way from being exhaustive or definitive, but it does attempt to make the concepts as simple as possible. The key phrase here is that in a system of axioms it is possible to have a statement that is true but unprovable. Penrose went from this to arguing that in going beyond the axioms that could be represented by algorithms, the human mind was doing something that no classical computer could do. He classed this as mathematical understanding, which was later extended by Hameroff to include consciousness generally.

23/10/09: In many ways it seems that science has come full circle since the time of the ancient Greeks. Greek science has been justifiably criticised for concentrating on mathematics and reasoned writing, but doing little in the way of experiment and observation. The strength of modern science lies just in those areas of experiment and observation, but at least in controversial areas such as conscious studies, it can seem to be prone to bending the results of experiment to pre-set concepts, rather than entering into the kind of reasoned interpretation that set western science on its path in the first place.

23/10/09: The latest addition is a review of Daniel Wegner's 'The Illusion of consciousness'. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that conscious will is not efficacious. The Libet experiments suggest that unconscious processing drives trivial actions such as moving a finger. Wegner argues that this is the same for all apparently consciously willed actions. To do this, he must separate conscious desires, plans and intentions from bodily actions. Although the claimed fact ong f such a separation is repeated many times through this book, the argument really rests on a single example. This involves a dinner at which the intention to follow a diet is temporally abandoned in favour of eating a dessert. This is supposed to show that not just this, but all longer-term plans and desires have no causal influence, with causal influence being confined to last moment intentions, in this case, the decision to eat the dessert. This final intention, however, is driven by unconscious processing, leaving only an illusion of conscious will. Three things are not discussed in this argument. Firstly, there are many occasions on which conscious plans are carried out, and in these cases, no clearly stated reason is given for a separation between the conscious plans and the apparently related conscious action. The between-the-lines reason for rejecting this possibility is that consciousness is deemed to be non-physical and therefore non-efficacious, but such an argument steps outside the scientific paradigm by positing the existence of something non-physical. Without this assumption, the burden of proof is very much on Wegner, to show why conscious plans do not lead to conscious actions. Secondly, we might think that the conscious anticipation of the dessert would have some influence on the decision, rather than just relying on unconscious processing. Finally, a recent study shows that subjects that believe they can effect the outcome of their activities actually perform better at those activities, than those who do not think they can influence the outcome, suggesting an actual role for conscious will.

04/10/09: The recent Royal Society lectures on technologies associated with spin-polarised electrons contained much material familiar to students of quantum consciousness. Hence, we come across both carbon nanotubes, structurally reminiscent of microtubules, and we are also told that 'a quasi-equilibrium system of bosons can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation even at relatively high temperatures, if the flow-rate of energy pumped into the system exceeds a critical value', a process strongly reminiscent of Frohlich and Hameroff's ideas for coherence in living systems. The point here is not to make a simplistic or pseudo-scientific link between two areas of science, but to stress the way in which mainstream consciousness studies seems to often be science-light, and cut off from modern developments in physics. Consciousness studies appears to be disproportionately influenced by philosophy and psychology. This is not to decry these disciplines as such, but much of modern philosophy seems to be a type of under-labouring for a basically 19th century view of the physical world, while psychology is most closely related to the outward behaviour of humans, rather than the physical brain, and has moreover never really escaped from attitudes deriving from the discredited concept of behaviourism.

04/10/09: The latest addition is a review of Pokorny's 1999 paper discussing Frohlich, and the possibility of quantum coherence and energy condensation in living systems. Later papers by Pokorny relevant to coherence in protein have also been reviewed.

03/10/09: The Root of Thought: This book draws attention to the importance of astrocytes in the functioning of the brain. This represents an attempt to reverse more than a century of neglect, since Cajal promoted the overriding primacy of the neuron in brain function. The material here has no immediate connection to consciousness studies, although astrocytes could well turn out to have a role in consciousness, and in the meantime this book is a reminder that many approaches to consciousness work with an over simplified and unenquiring model of the brain.

01/10/09: SCHOLARPEDIA: Scolarpedia is the more intellectually exclusive version of Wikipedia. Christof Koch and Florian Mormann are responsible for the Scholarpedia article on neural correlates of consciousness. Koch was a collaborator in consciousness studies with the late Francis Crick, who was one of the initiators of modern consciousness studies. Crick's seminal book 'The Astonishing Hypothesis' started with the confident note that 'you're nothing but a pack of neurons', but by the end of his life, he had retreated to the more tentative notion that it was better just to study the correlates of consciousness, and hope that these gave a lead towards consciousness itself. This seems to be the background of the present Scholarpedia article.

For the most part, this is an unexceptionable article, but there are a few points worth raising. One of the few things that I would agree with Dennett on is that there are a lot of closet Cartesians out there, even in the most materialist and orthodox academia, and the authors of the article appear to be amongst this number, referring to the mind-body problem as the 'nature of the relationship between the immaterial conscious mind and its physical basis.' It is hard to see how they can talk of something immaterial given their mainstream scientific stance, when the concept of the immaterial is meaningless within the scientific paradigm. This might be dismissed as a trivial matter, if it was not apparent that a lot of the problem the mainstream has with consciousness is the assumption that it is not part of the physical world, and therefore cannot interact with it. This despite the fact that they deny the possible existence of anything immaterial in the first place.

Even more questionable is the notion that an artificially created correlate of consciousness could go on to create consciousness itself. This seems false in its basic logic. Being a correlate of something does not imply physical identity with it. Thunder and lightning are correlated, but they are not the same thing, and creating a loud bang will not produce lightning.

The discussion of quantum consciousness in this article fails to get to grips with the core issues of the decoherence debate. There is a prima facie case for rapid decoherence of any quantum states in the brain, but the possibility of shielding of quantum states has been raised, and this should be at least discussed. Furthermore the article has not been updated to assess the implications of recently demonstrated long-lived quantum coherence in photosynthetic proteins.

20/09/09: ROBOTS: AN ADMISSION THAT AI CAN'T DO HUMAN PERCEPTION? A recent article in 'Scientific American' (19 September 2009) looks close to being an admission that classical computing can't replicate human/animal perception. Robots/computers have always had difficulty with objection recognition, and related to this difficulty with navigation in buildings, and presumably elsewhere if they ever managed to get outside. Despite decades of heavy government and corporate expenditure, and the usual forecasts about taking over from humans in a few years, robots can only manage recognition of a few simple objects such as coffee cups, and even mess up on these if the angle or light is difficult. Now there is a robot design, where the robot photographs objects it cannot identify, and sends the photo to a remote computer for identification by a human operator. This clumsy and costly design seems to be an admission that perception is beyond present and possibly all classical computers. At any rate, we must hope that this robot is never set to work in the type of dysfunctional office where I used to work, where practical jokers might instruct the robot that an open brief case was really a coffee cup.

13/04/09: YouTube Presentations: The latest contribution on(Mainstream 11)criticises a series of presentations on YouTube claiming to refute the Penrose/Hameroff model of quantum consciousness.

I have to say here that I find it inexcusable that someone can go public in a high profile manner, when they have either not read Penrose, have forgotten what he said, or have simply failed to comprehend it.

A crucial misconception that runs through several of the LordImmolation (LI) talks is that Penrose is proposing that consciousness is linked to the normal collapse of the wave function, or decoherence, which is usually viewed as happening when the quantum wave becomes sufficiently entangled with the environment. The selection of position and other classical states that results from this is random, and Penrose himself agrees that this randomness is obviously an unsuitable base for mathematical understanding.

Penrose, however, goes on to ask what happens to quantum waves, if they remain isolated from the environment. This is essentially the Schrodinger cat problem of whether or not there is a limit to the size of quantum superpositions. Penrose argues that there is such a limit. Each superposition of a particle is hypothesised to have its own piece of spacetime. Spacetime is here conceived of as a network rather than a continuum. As the wave functions evolve, the superpositions grow further apart, creating a blister or separation in spacetime. When this separation reaches the Planck length of 10^-35m, the blister becomes unstable, and the wave function quickly collapses. This type of collapse, not involving contact with the environment is referred to as 'objective reduction'. Penrose speculates that this form of reduction is neither random nor deterministic, but has the non-computable quality of mathematical understanding. Penrose's position is that this is the only plausible place in the universe that he can find for a property of mathematical understanding that is neither based on a deterministic algorithm nor randomness.

For discussion of further points on the YouTube presentations see Mainstream 11.

04/09/09: Our latest summary/review is of 'How many people are there in my head? And in hers?' by Jonathan Edwards. This book is a refreshing change from the norm of consciousness books either providing me-too versions of 'the brain is a computer' or 'consciousness/self/freewill are an illusion, or tacking a one chapter crib of some convenient reductionist philosopher onto 500 pages of neuroscience. The author has painstakingly researched and reasoned out his own theory to the effect that consciousness arises at the level of individual neurons and is carried by a classical electromechanical wave in the cell membrane. This wave may regulate post-synaptic potentials in the dendrites that determine the firing of action potentials.