George Dvorsky - Does Consciousness Arise from Quantum Processes in the Brain?

Stuart Hameroff pretty much lost ALL credibility with anyone in the science world when he was featured so prominently in the horrible pseudo-documentary, What the Bleep Do We Know!? (my original review of the film and a brief comment on the "extended director's cut").

Here is a critique of that film (including, indirectly, refutation of Hameroff's [lack of] understanding of physics) from the Rational Wiki:

One of the key misrepresentations of quantum theory in the film is the line "quantum theory is the science of possibility", directly implying that the discovery and development of quantum mechanics somehow allows anything to happen, such as walking on water. More accurately, quantum theory is the science of probability; although the distinction is subtle to some, it is very important. Quantum phenomena, at least in the Copenhagen Interpretation, are all about the probability that a sub-atomic particle will be found at a particular position - crucially, this is only applicable in reality at the sub-atomic level.

The basic facts of neurology and quantum mechanics presented in the film are correct. Facts such as the uncertainty principle, where an object cannot have its exact position and momentum measured simultaneously (sometimes explained as the quantum effect that observing something fundamentally changes what is observed) is also real with real implications. However, the main mistake in the film is that it attempts to extrapolate these effects, which are only observed with atoms and electrons, to the macroscopic world. Thus, when the main character turns away from a basketball, the film depicts that it is now impossible to know its position because you're not observing it, such as in the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment. Of course, in reality, the ground is observing the ball every time it collides with it (there's nothing special about human eyes when it comes to observation in this sense), and the sound waves generated also let a person with their back turned know fairly precisely where it is (although the main character is deaf...).

Such extrapolations of very real quantum phenomena into unrealistic conclusions are often the cornerstone of the modern New Age movement which seeks to prove itself with science. These effects are certainly not observed in the macroscopic world. Other points raised in the film and presented as fact include that water molecules are influenced by thought, or that the brain cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. All these points are either based on very unsound or fraudulent evidence, or distortions of real research.[3]

Anyway . . . I share all of this to inform you that what you are about to read should held lightly and with considerable skepticism.

It's not clear as of now whether Hameroff and Penrose are on to something, since there is no way at this time to test their hypotheses. However, it is clear that Hameroff engages in some seriously muddled thinking and does so under the authority of his degree and position at the University of Arizona.

[How fitting that this shows up the same day I receive the announcement for the 2014 Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, which Hameroff co-founder and co-organizes each year.]

Does consciousness arise from quantum processes in the brain?

George Dvorsky

Stuart Hameroff is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona — but he's a pariah as far as most neuroscientists are concerned. The reason? Consciousness, he dares say, is far more than just a computational process — it's actually quantum.

Along with the esteemed mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, Hameroff is the co-author of the highly controversial Orch OR model of consciousness (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) — the suggestion that quantum phenomenon, rather than classical mechanics, can explain conscious awareness.

The theory presents a new kind of wave function collapse that occurs in isolation, called objective reduction. This wave function collapse, they argue, is the only possible non-physical thing that can account for a non-computable process, namely consciousness. They speculate that this could happen inside the brain's microtubules.

 

Recently, Nikola Danaylov of the Singularity 1 on 1 podcast caught up with Hameroff to learn more. The result is a fascinating one hour interview in which the two discuss a number of topics, including various theories of mind, how anesthesia can inform the debate, the Orch OR model, and why the vast majority of scientists are disdainful of it.

In addition, they get into some weird territory and discuss quantum souls, the afterlife, reincarnation, and Hinduism and Buddhism. They even hit some futurist topics like the Singularity, cryonics, and chemical brain preservation, and also discuss Hameroff's upcoming paper (together with Roger Penrose) where they will review and present new evidence in support of their theory. 

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Image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock.

How interesting that the TED folks allowed Hameroff to give his talk but took down Sheldrake and Hancock, and then canceled the whole TEDx West Hollywood program. Hameroff is just as speculative as the others, and was featured in a film (the inane What the Bleep Do We Know!?) about Ramtha, "a Lemurian warrior who fought the Atlanteans over 35,000 years ago," and is channeled by JZ Knight in her 12,800-square-foot French chateau-style home in Yelm, Washington.

Yeah, no woo here.

The attacks on Sheldrake and Hancock are political - they challenged the existing system in ways it cannot defend against short of silencing them. But Hameroff is within the system, claiming to use quantum physics to support his claims.

The Future of Consciousness: Stuart Hameroff at TEDx Tucson

Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness. For nearly forty years, Dr. Hameroff's research is centered on how the pinkish gray meat between our ars produces the richness of experiential awareness. A clinical anesthesiologist, Hameroff has studied how anesthetic gas molecules selectively erase consciousness via delicate quantum effects on protein dynamics. Following a longstanding interest in the computational capacity of microtubules inside neurons, Hameroff teamed with the eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop a controversial quantum theory of consciousness called orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) which connects brain processes to fundamental spacetime geometry. Recently Hameroff has explored the theoretical implications of Orch OR for consciousness to exist independent of the body, distributed in deeper, lower, faster scales in non-local, holographic spacetime, raising possible scientific approaches to the soul and spirituality.

Conscious Electromagnetic Field Information (CEMI) Theory

Peter at Conscious Entities recently posted a summary of a new article by Johnjoe McFadden in support of his conscious electromagnetic field information (CEMI) theory. The theory of CEMI is based on the observations of synchronous neural firing, which McFadden claims is correlated with conscious awareness.

Of course, others have taken note of synchronized firing of a lot of neurons firing at specific frequencies and suggested this might be significant. CEMI theory, however, explains why it is important by suggesting that "synchronous firing produces effects in the endogenous magnetic field, which unsynchronised activity does not. If registering in that field is taken to be the same as presentation to consciousness we have a neat account of the phenomenon."

In the new paper, McFadden claims several new experiments support his model. The following is from the summary of Conscious Entities, CEMI Vindicated?

The first of the new studies quoted by McFadden, by Fujisawa et al, showed that fields of the kind generated by gamma oscillations in a slice of rat hippocampus affected the neuronal firing pattern. This demonstrates that neurons can influence each other significantly by electromagnetic means quite separate from ‘normal’ synaptic activity. The second, by Frohlich and McCormick, showed broadly similar influences of electromagnetic fields in the visual cortex of ferrets, supporting the claim that the endogenous fields provide a positive feedback loop that helps set up oscillatory networks. The third is research by Anastassiou et al which showed that neurons could influence each other through electric field effects: we discussed this ‘ephaptic coupling’ and pointed out its relevance to McFadden a couple of years ago (you read it here first, folks!).

So there’s the evidence; what does it actually mean? I think McFadden is right to claim that the evidence for electromagnetic field effects on neuron firing is now too strong to ignore. At a minimum, it’s something brain simulations will need to take into account. It’s likely, moreover, that rather than simply being a nuisance factor, it actually plays some functional role in how networks of neurons are recruited and operate together. Anything more? McFadden suggests it may solve the binding problem; I’m not so sure. The binding problem is essentially the question of how information flows from different senses, processed at different speeds, with lags and gaps, somehow manage to end up in a smoothly coherent perception of reality with no jumps or lip-synch problems. Solving that problem may well involve bringing the activity of different neural assemblies together, but to me it’s not clear how field effects could do anything other than smoosh all the inputs together, which is almost the opposite of what we want.

Speculatively McFadden suggests the EM field might be doing field computing, whatever that may be. He quotes a bizarre finding from the School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences (COGS) group at the University of Sussex. They used an evolutionary approach to develop a network which could perform a certain task, and then deleted the nodes which weren’t playing any part in the the final network. Weirdly, they found that one of the essential nodes was not actually connected to anything; yet removing it made the network stop working; put it back and the network worked again. They concluded that electromagnetic coupling must be playing a part. Of course electromagnetic effects in a field-programmable gate array (the equipment used by COGS) are not particularly likely to be anything like electromagnetic effects in the radically different physical substrate of neuronal tissue, but it does illustrate the general principle.

I still don’t see that there are particularly good reasons to say that the EM field is the home of consciousness. For one thing consciousness is full of very complex content: while I can easily see how that complexity could be encoded in the fantastically complex patterns of neuron firing which go on in the cortex, it’s harder to think that the EM field has a sufficiently elaborate structure. My consciousness is (in places) quite sharply defined and multi-layered, whereas a EM field seems more likely to provide a misty general glow. Perhaps the neurons provide the content and the EM field the subjectivity?

But one thing McFadden’s theory cannot be is a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of subjective experience; his electromagnetic consciousness is playing a vital functional role in the operation of the brain, whereas qualia, strictly defined, have no causal effects. So much the worse for the theory of qualia, you might think; that just helps show that Dennett was right and the whole business of qualia is nonsensical. However, Sue Pockett, whose electromagnetic theory of consciousness is a kind of cousin of McFadden’s, has jumped the other way on this, accepting that her own electromagnetic consciousness is epiphenomenal: it is produced by the brain but doesn’t in turn produce any effects of its own; consciousness is a mere observer. This enables her to stay in the game so far as the Hard Problem is concerned, but of course it lands her with a different set of problems.

The original article is available through Machines Life Us.

Here is a little bio of McFadden from Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona.

Johnjoe McFadden is a molecular biologist/microbiologist. Nearly a decade ago he became interested in the possibility of quantum mechanics playing a non-trivial role in life, particularly in the process of mutation. Whilst researching this topic for a popular science book, ‘Quantum Evolution’, he encountered the quantum theories of consciousness. His reading convinced him that consciousness must indeed be some kind of physical field but he was not persuaded that macroscopic quantum states were feasible in a warm wet brain. Instead he stumbled upon the idea that the brain’s own electromagnetic field was a far more realistic substrate for consciousness and went on to propose the conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory. 

The cemi field theory was first described in McFadden’s popular science book ‘Quantum Evolution’ in 2000 and then described in more detail in two JCS papers published in 2002. Since then McFadden has continued his mainstream work in molecular genetics but maintains a keen interest in attempts to provide the study of consciousness with a solid scientific foundation.

The article was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 20, Numbers 1-2, 2013 , pp. 153-168(16).

Abstract

Several theories of conscious first described about a decade ago, including the conscious electromagnetic information (CEMI) field theory, claimed that the substrate of consciousness is the brain’s electromagnetic (EM) field. These theories were prompted by the observation, in many diverse systems, that synchronous neuronal firing, which generates coherent EM fields, was a strong correlate of attention, awareness and consciousness. However, when these theories were first described there was no direct evidence that synchronous firing was actually functional, rather than an epiphenomenon of brain function. Additionally, any EM field-based consciousness would be a ‘ghost in the machine’ unless the brain’s endogenous EM field is also able to influence neurone firing. Once again, when these theories were first described, there was only indirect evidence that the brain’s EM field influenced neuron firing patterns in the brain. In this paper I describe recent experimental evidence which demonstrate that synchronous neuronal firing does indeed have a functional role in the brain; and also that brain’s endogenous EM field is involved in recruiting neurones to synchronously firing networks. The new data point to a new and unappreciated form of neural communication in the brain that is likely to have significance for all theories of consciousness. I describe an extension of the cemi field theory that incorporates these recent experimental findings and integrates the theory with the ‘communication through coherence’ hypothesis.