Towards Experimental Tests of Quantum Effects in Cytoskeletal Proteins

Abstract

PREFACEThis volume is appropriately titled "The Emerging Physics of Consciousness" and much of it is focused on using some aspect of "quantum weirdness" to solve the problems associated with the phenomenon of consciousness. This is sometimes done in hopes that perhaps the two mysteries will somehow cancel each other through such phenomena as quantum coherence and entanglement or superposition of wavefunctions. We are not convinced that such a cancellation can take place. In fact, finding that quantum phenomena are involved in consciousness, what we will call the "Quantum Consciousness Idea" (QCI) (fathered largely by Penrose and Hameroff [1][2][3]), is likely to confound both mysteries and is of great interest.In our contribution, we want to emphasize the "Emerging" part of this volume's title by pointing out that there is a glaring need for properly controlled and reproducible experimental work if any proposed quantum phenomena in biological matter, let alone consciousness are to be taken seriously.There are three broad kinds of experiments that one can devise to test hypotheses involving the relevance of quantum effects to the phenomenon of consciousness. The three kinds address three different scale ranges associated roughly with tissue-to-cell (1cm-10µm), cell-toprotein (10µm-10nm) and protein-to-atom (10nm-1Å) sizes. Note that we are excluding experiments that aim to detect quantum effects at the "whole human" or even "society" level as these have consistently given either negative results or been plagued by irreproducibility and bad science (e.g. the various extra sensory perception and remote viewing experiments [4]).The consciousness experiments belonging to the tissue-cell scale frequently utilize apparatus such as electro-encephalographs (EEG) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track

Movement and Alignment of Microtubules in Electric Fields and Electric-Dipole-Moment Estimates

“…Further experiments with other physical and chemical parameters are necessary to get more general results. To measure the permanent dipole moment other methods have to be used [33,34].…”

A critical assessment of the information processing capabilities of neuronal microtubules using coherent excitations

“…Condensed ion clouds that are attracted to the MT due to its large negative surface charge, known as Debye screening, have been suggested as another form of shielding [65]. Similar to this is the idea of shielding due to the existence of ordered water surrounding the MT [24,65]. Spectroscopic studies of resonant intermolecular transfer of vibrational energy in liquid water have shown that energy is transferred rapidly along water molecules before it dissipates [67], thus providing a mechanism for shielding the MT from thermal energy.…”

“…As such, the electrical properties of tubulin are under active investigation. Based on the crystal structure of tubulin, computer simulations and experimental tests have yielded an electric dipole moment of 1,740 Debye, a refractive index of 2.90, a high frequency dielectric constant of 8.41, and a high frequency polarizability of 2.1 × 10 −33 Cm 2 /V [24]. As well, an electrostatic potential map of the crystal structure has shown that the interior of the tubulin molecule contains a fairly symmetric double-well structure, providing a confining potential for a mobile electron (see [18] and Section 3).…”

“…However, we are currently able to use atomic resolution information about the structure of tubulin in our computational models. Mershin et al [24] have developed a model that treats MT as quantum mechanically isolated cavities exhibiting properties analogous to the electromagnetic cavities used in quantum optics and have suggested several experimental tests to further this idea.…”

A Recurrent Quantum Neural Network Model to Describe Eye Tracking of Moving Targets

“…Indeed, there are certain aspects of brain functions that still appear to have no satisfactory explanation. As an alternative, researchers [6,7,8,9] are investigating whether the brain can demonstrate quantum mechanical behavior. According to current research, microtubules, the basic components of neural cytoskeleton, are very likely to possess quantum mechanical properties due to their size and structure.…”