“Quantum cognition is itself a controversial subject under heavy debates,” goes on Bo Song, research scholar at University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. But this marriage between neuroscience and quantum mechanics is getting stronger, for recent studies break old dogma that brain is acting in classical style or mode. Might quantum phenomena, once the neat, linear domain of physics, hold the secret of brain and consciousness? Promising suggestions are at least that it’s worth a shot.
They are most clearly embodied by Partha Ghose and Dimitris Pinotsis, who showed mathematically that the noise of the neurons, previously regarded as random noise, is extremely likely to be behaving quantum like. Based on Edward Nelson’s derivation process of the Schrödinger equation from classical Brownian motion, they derived a Schrödinger type equation for a neuron. It not only decides the probability of a neuron’s membrane potential at any moment in time, but also leads to the formulation of a “neuronal constant” analogy such as Planck’s constant to quantum theory. And as Pinotsis concludes at the end, “This suggested that quantum phenomena, including quantum entanglement, might survive at larger scales.”
It is of gigantic importance. Ghose and Pinotsis put the likelihood of quantum entanglement behind brain wave oscillations, neurological disease diagnostic markers, at an estimate. “Penrose and Hameroff have suggested that quantum entanglement might be related to lack of consciousness, so this study could shed light on how anaesthetics work,” Pinotsis goes on. It’s a challenge to neuroscientists to design experiments that will actually measure the energy their simulations predict to be present, and even possibly be able to observe quantum effects on neurons.
The mystery is further boosted by Shanghai University’s Yi Cong Chen and coauthors’ report to render the possibility of entanglement as these are defined in quantum mechanics extremely plausible in the brain. The myelin sheaths insulation material on nerve fibers are their object of study perhaps cross wrapped by infrared photons emitted when chemistry is being performed in neurons. These photons can become entangled in pairs if there were entangled photons that would facilitate high speed communication of brain locations and increase neural synchrony. Chen explains, “If the power of evolution was looking for handy action over a distance, quantum entanglement would be [an] ideal candidate for this role.” Mathematical calculations by scientists show that the tubular vacuoles or myelin sheaths might even amplify electromagnetic radiation and even produce biphotons photonic pairs with entangled relationships.
The photons may be transmitted by the nervous system, perhaps as a quantum communication link. Experimental confirmation would be hard to imagine, but Chen acknowledges that it is challenging to identify entangled photons within a living body and says, “Finding proof of the entangled photons theorized in this new work for example, directly detecting them in a living system like a mouse would be quite difficult.”
Quantum processing and brain function are related far more than through synchronization. Quantum phenomena also influence consciousness. Researchers at Trinity College in Ireland used MRI technology to visualize the interactions between protons’ spins, which can have implications suggesting entanglement. Working neuroscientist Christian Kerskens clarifies, “The HEP [heartbeat evoked potential] is tied to consciousness because it depends on awareness.” The entanglement signal at the time that the subjects were in conscious awareness state vanished once the subjects entered sleep state, which would be an indication of interaction between quantum effects and consciousness. While certain of the research results are optimistic, caution also prevails.
To mention just one, physicist Max Tegmark has pushed the well known argument that the brain is “too wet, warm and noisy” for quantum mechanics to be in control. There is additional rational evidence from quantum biology to refute him. Quantum effects have, for instance, been found in photosynthesis and animal navigation, illustrating how cryptochromes proteins are able to detect magnetic fields. Perhaps the same principles don’t apply to the brain? Nobody yet has that knowledge. The implications of this project are profound. If quantum entanglement is what neurons use to achieve synchrony, quantum algorithms and architecture will be founded upon it.
Likewise, artificial neural networks are inspired by the processing power of the brain, and the quantum phenomena occurring within neurons can be exploited to design quantum neural networks in order to solve computationally hard problems with a record speed. Apart from that, the ability of the brain to support entangled states in noisy brain environments can be utilized to clarify how more robust quantum systems may be made available for future quantum computing and quantum communication technologies.
While quantum brain entanglement remains speculative, scientists already look forward eagerly to observation. As Chen warned, “Quantum cognition is itself a controversial subject under heavy debates. We won’t say there is a direct connection.” But unconventional wisdom and inter disciplinary inquiry may be the frontier sentinel of cognitive and consciousness paradigms.
This frontier provokes the paradigms of quantum physics and neuroscience, tempting us with dreams of the insulated life of the human brain. Whether or not quantum mechanics is the secret, only time will reveal, but the journey to discovery will change our knowledge of biology, physics, and consciousness itself.
