The Experimental Evidence of Quantum Mechanics

Travis J. A. Craddock

As the emerging field of quantum biology matures it is becoming possible to understand the fundamental workings of biological systems at the subatomic level. Understanding the complex function of the brain from this vantage point is no exception. Looking at the subcellular functions of neurons beyond the standard classical mechanisms of chemical and electrical signaling offers the potential to design advanced diagnostics and therapeutics for neurological disorders and mental illnesses based on quantum technologies and could even lead to a more comprehensive understanding of human cognition, behavior, or even consciousness itself. Towards this end there have been many theories proposed for how quantum mechanics may play a role in brain function. However, regardless of how promising these theories are, without experimental evidence to provide validation they are merely interesting conjectures. Here we present a review of current theoretical quantum mechanisms proposed to influence brain function (e.g., spin-based mechanisms, optical mechanisms) and place them in the context of existing experimental evidence. We find that experimental evidence does support quantum mechanisms that may exist in the brain, but significant challenges remain in explaining how such mechanisms may influence processes on relevant biological lengths and timescales. Potential approaches to address these challenges are also discussed.

Brian C. Hall

J Manners

Chapter 2 Schrodinger’s wave mechanics I Quantum mechanics — a new approach to describing atomic m atter If experimental evidence conflicts with an accepted scientific theory, adjustments to the theory can usually be made, but only up to a point. As mounting experimental evidence becomes overwhelming, scientists sometimes have to revolutionize their ideas with a new theory capable of accommodating experimental observations comfortably. Perhaps the most significant scientific revolution since the time of Newton, began at around the turn of the twentieth century and peaked in the mid1920s, with the advent of Schrodinger’s formulation of quantum mechanics. The need for a revolutionary theory of microscopic nature began to be recognized as the results of experimental atomic physics accreted into a body of evidence which, scientists eventually realized, undermined many of the basic ideas of classical mechanics. (Figure 2.1.) The challenge to classical mechanics could hardly have been more formidable, for the world of classical mechanics is deterministic. Classical mechanics supposes that, while the mathematical difficulties are often insurmountable, it is in principle possible, given sufficient information about the present, to predict the future exactly, that is, to predict the progress of any experiment with absolute certainty. The evidence from atomic physics implied that this was not true of microscopic nature. In microscopic nature, identical conditions do not produce identical results.

Elio Conte, Andrei Yu. Khrennikov, Orlando Todarello +2 more

In the first part of the paper we reach an experimental final confirmation that mental states follow quantum mechanics. In the second part further experimentation indicates that in mind states Bell inequality violation is possible.

P.M. Clark, J.E. Turner