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arXiv:gr-qc/9409007

Essay on mesoscopic and quantum brain

Haret Codratian Rosu

Published Sep 5, 1994• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In the pure essay style (no mathematical formulas), I present a number of speculative reflections and suggestions on possible applications of mesoscopic methods and of quantum mechanical concepts to as such a complex system as the human brain. As an initial guide for this essay I used ``The Emperor's New Mind" of Roger Penrose
DOI
10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/9409007

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From the Publisher: A New York Times bestseller when it appeared in 1989, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind was universally hailed as a marvelous survey of modern physics as well as a brilliant reflection on the human mind, offering a new perspective on the scientific landscape and a visionary glimpse of the possible future of science. Now, in Shadows of the Mind, Penrose offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts an even more powerful attack on artificial intelligence. But perhaps more important, in this volume he points the way to a new science, one that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind. Penrose contends that some aspects of the human mind lie beyond computation. This is not a religious argument (that the mind is other than physical) nor is it based on the brain's vast complexity (the weather is immensely complex, says Penrose, but it is still a computable thing, at least in theory). Instead, he provides powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is in the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation - and will find no explanation in terms of present-day science. To illuminate what he believes this something might be, and to suggest where a new physics must proceed so that we may understand it, Penrose cuts a wide swathe through modern science, providing penetrating looks at everything from Turing computability and Godel's incompleteness, via Schrodinger's Cat and the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb-testing problem, to detailed microbiology. Of particular interest is Penrose's extensive examination of quantum mechanics, which introduces some new ideas that differ markedly from those advanced in The Emperor's New Mind, especially concerning the mysterious interface where classical and quantum physics meet. But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Shadows of the Mind is Penrose's excursion into microbiology, where he examines cytoskeletons and microtubules, minute substructures lying dee
Abstract In The Emperor’s New Mind and Shadows of the Mind, Roger Penrose followed a delicate thread to begin to unravel the problem of consciousness. He concluded that conscious thought is more than computation—our minds utilize some type of non-algorithmic processing unavailable in computers. Regarding the identity of the proposed processing, the intrepid sleuth also searched for a ‘subtle and largely unknown physical principle’ capable of performing the needed non-computational actions. That principle was deduced to be ‘objective reduction’ (OR) of quantum coherent superposition, Penrose’s quantum gravity solution for the problem of wave function collapse in quantum mechanics. The next piece of the puzzle then became: where and how could quantum coherent superposition and OR occur in the brain? To that end, Penrose began collaboration with this author, who suggested that the logical and most likely source of macroscopic quantum effects in the brain lies in neuronal microtubules in the cell cytoskeleton.
This paper is based on the book (O. Kupervasser, Application of New Cybernetics in Physics, Elsevier, 2017). Human brain has very powerful intellect. Indeed, it seems that its intellectual possibilities are much more than possibilities of usual computers using genetic algorithm and random search (A.S. Potapov, Artificial Intellect and Universal Intelligence, Polytechnics, Saint Petersburg, 2012 (in Russian).). Our brain has also such especial property as consciousness. Some researchers suppose that these properties are a result of special structures of brain. Really, may be our brain is a quantum computer (R. Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989, R. Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994)? We know that a quantum computer is highly parallel device with principally insuperable protection from external observation. A quantum computer can resolve some tasks that are inaccessible for usual computers. However, it can be demonstrated that continuous unstable classical computer has the same properties as a quantum computer (O. Kupervasser, Application of New Cybernetics in Physics, Elsevier, 2017). Moreover, it seems that the main properties of a brain (powerful intellect and consciousness) can be explained by invisible correlation with surround world. Similarly, clock’s gear wheel very accurately operates in spite of absence of any intellect only because the gear wheel is a part of the highly correlated clock. We usually suppose that our world is some random set of low correlated events. However, the world, may be, is some highly correlated device (L. Susskind, J. Lindesay, An Introduction to Black Holes, Information and the String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2004). And human beings are its “gear wheels”. It seems that Big Bang theory suppose such point of view. This pure philosophical reasonings can lead to some practical conclusions. We suppose to use instead of usual random search for computers some random number generators which are in complex correlations with surround world. It can give to computers some prototype of the such especial “human intuition”, described above.