X-Message-Number: 5475 From: Date: Tue, 26 Dec 1995 09:56:43 -0500 Subject: quantum brain Re quantum coherent superposition in a brain and the possible relation of "non-computable" quantum phenomena to consciousness: I mentioned Lockwood's book, which in turn draws on Marshall, Froehlich, Deutsch, Bond & Huth, and others. I am impressed with the scope of Lockwood's discussion, and hope one day to have a better grasp of all the principles involved. Very briefly, however, this part of the discussion seems to center on systems of dipole oscillators as Bose-Einstein condensates, as well as nonlocalized electrons; reasons are given why such might occur in normothermic brains. (The bosons of the system are the quanta of the normal collective frequency modes of the hypothetical oscillators, which could be dielectric protein molecules; part of the pumped energy from outside the system is stored in the "phonon" system, achieving coherence or long-range spatial order.) None of this is proven actually to occur, but also apparently none of it is clearly ruled out. Again: MIND, BRAIN & THE QUANTUM; THE COMPOUNT 'I', Michael Lockwood, Blackwell (Oxford UK and Cambridge USA), 1989. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5475