Hey guys, I'd like to get your opinions on a possible application of quantum mechanics in explaining subjective experience. This theory is drawn from a book that came out recently, and it seems convincing to me, but introspection is a slippery, highly deceptive topic. Tell me if you think these ideas make intuitive sense, or if you disagree in some way, it would be interesting to get an elaboration of why.


Up to this point, it has seemed that quantum phenomena are exceedingly sensitive to incoming energy, so even the slightest increase in entropy can produce decoherence, converting a system into the more familiar form of self-contained jostling particles combining and separating at rates determined by three-dimensional structure. Hypothesizing claims quantum biology is in need of a thermodynamic buffer shielding its actions from even most molecular-scale forces, which directs the search for its presence to very specific chemical components of even large macromolecules, particularly anywhere that individual protons, electrons or other charged particles are relatively free to shift across some kind of gap, such as between atoms.

One possible instance of a biologically active quantum occurrence is the fast triplet reaction. An electron in an outer atomic orbital paired with its partner of opposite spin is so to speak knocked or drawn out of position into another atom due to the peculiar orientation of these atoms to each other. Even after this happens, the newly positioned electron remains quantum entangled with its former mate, and electromagnetic force is also exerted on it by its new partner, in which state it is in a superposition putting it into a statistical percentage of same spin with each, a highly unstable formation that can be driven out of its wavering tension by tiny quantities of energy. When this type of reaction exists upstream of biochemical pathways in key cells, its effects might be magnified by the molecular flow it instigates, engendering an exquisite sensitivity of organic processes to the environment.

A fast triplet reaction was found by molecular biologists at a particular site in a blue light sensitive pigment called cryptochrome present throughout the animal kingdom within many different cell types and body parts, and was almost simultaneously identified in the eyes of European robins and the antennae of the monarch butterfly based on collaboration with field biologists. These two instances came to the heightened attention of biochemists because it was apparent that the cryptochrome reaction is sensitive enough to respond to the earth’s magnetic field, a vanishingly small energy source, supplying a possible perceptual means of managing long range migrations. Through a fortunate set of events the camps joined forces, discussing each other’s research projects and pinning down cryptochrome as a likely candidate for stimulating magnetically-induced qualia in transient species. Cryptochrome and similar molecules in additional organs also have a plausible adaptive role for making organisms sensitive to the magnetic charge of approaching storm fronts and other natural events, allowing them as everyone notices to find shelter far in advance. Statistical math, conceptual modeling and chemistry experiments with a bioactive molecule have, along with ongoing fact-gathering about the natural world and interdisciplinary efforts, set modeling on course for novel mechanistic understanding down to the atomic level of some core perceptual phenomena previously untouched by science.

Also in the initiatory theoretical stages is quantum theory’s promise for clarifying the workings of human consciousness. It has been known for decades that nerve cells function by voltage conductance down their length as ions are transported through the axon's cell membrane in a directional sequence of ion channels, stimulating the release of neurotransmitters into the synaptic clefts between axon terminals and dendrites as well as between dendrites, where neurons intersect. A well-founded model, but as in the case of enzyme activity, the process happens too fast to be explained in the standard way, as spherical particles incrementally ferried through a three-dimensional rate bottleneck. It is also unclear how qualia with their subjectively experienced causal effects can exist at all in association with averred bare, traditional chemistry, resulting in a persistently advocated dichotomy of mind and matter in our modeling of the central nervous system.

Accounts have ranged all the way from consciousness as an accidental byproduct of the brain, supervenient on matter, with consciousness’ apparent causality being an illusion, at most a certainty-bolstering epiphenomenon of perceived free will, to awareness as fundamental to the universe and matter nestled within it, the corporeal world essentially being a perception. Philosopher Rene Descartes proposed the pineal gland as the point of intersection between mental and material, physicist Roger Penrose offered that gap junctions connecting brain cells might abet a synthesizing mechanism of qualia production, but contemporary quantum biology presages a superior model, though tests are still forthcoming.

Those versed in quantum mechanics find it likely that the extremely rapid rate of turnover in the ion flow cycle of nerve cells necessitates that these ions take the form of a tunneling wavicle as they enter and leave cells through transport channels. Rather than being seized as localized mass by some kind of membrane machinery and moved or coaxed with electromagnetic charge through a medium of three dimensions, they probably undergo higher-dimensional, near instantaneous tunneling into and out of the cell, along with a complementary wavicle afflux down longitudinal transport chains internal to the axon that bust through the rate barriers of diffusion. Along the length of the axon's interior, diffusion alone between ion transport nodes would require fourteen days, yet transduction of the total signal comes to pass in milliseconds, so obviously something much more potent is at work.

In this quantum state, ionic motion may be acutely responsive to minute inputs of energy, just as in the fast triplet reaction, and the electromagnetic field of the brain as registered by EEG machines may be such an energy source. If brain waves linked to states of awareness can in fact impact ion channels and perhaps additional quantum-scale facets of the biochemistry of brain and nervous system, this may go a long way towards explaining how qualia seem both supervenient and causal, with subjective consciousness being describable or at least much more predictable in terms of energy field/quantum mechanical interactions. Maybe we would gain the ability to say what something such as ‘color perception’ or ‘stream of consciousness’ is at the cellular level, and the dubious view that professes a paucity of function for the pervasive phenomenon of qualia would be overcome.


What do you guys think of this?