Cosmological Foundations of Consciousness
Chris King
Emeritus, Mathematics,
University of Auckland
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Supporting Online Material for Journal of Cosmology Article 103
10 Jan 2011
Abstract: How the
biological brain generates subjective consciousness remains the principal abyss
in the scientific description of reality, a problem complementary to the
cosmological theory of everything, and equally as challenging, because it takes
the scientific model beyond the confines of objective reality. This paper
examines the cosmological basis of consciousness and subjective experience in
biological organisms. It draws on
principles of symmetry-breaking and interactive non-linear dynamics to establish
the cosmological status of biogenesis, and biological tissues as fractal forms
of interactive symmetry-breaking. It then investigates the Archaean genetic
expansion as a source of the envelope of functional machinery forming the basis
of neural activity, based on the universal excitability of all living cells.
Finally it examines the biophysical basis for consciousness, both in single
cells, and in the human brain and its Cartesian theatre of consciousness, to
elucidate cosmological principles underlying the mind-body relationship.
Fig 1: Cosmic symmetry-breaking
and its interactive fractal and chaotic effects leading to biogenesis. (a) Life
portrayed as the consummation of interactive complexity (Σ) resulting from
symmetry-breaking of the fundamental force of nature in the big-bang (α), whatever ultimate fate is in
store (). Inset (i) possible
fractal inflation , (ii) the distribution of dark energy and matter and the
matter of stars and planets. (b) Logarithmic time scale of cosmological events
showing life on earth existing for a third of the universes current lifetime.
(c) Symmetry-breaking of the forces of nature results in the color and weak
forces generating 100 atomic nuclei, while gravity and electromagnetism govern
long-range structure determining biogenesis, from fractal chemical bonding, to
solar systems capable of photosynthetic life in the goldilocks zone of liquid
water. (d) Interactive effects of cosmic symmetry-breaking lead to hierarchical
interaction of the forces, generating hadrons, atomic nuclei and molecules (i).
Non-linear energetics of chemical bonding lead to a cascade of cooperative
weak-bonding effects, which generate fractal molecular complexity, from the
molecular orbitals of simple molecules (ii), through the 3D structures of
complex proteins and nucleic acids (iii) to supra-molecular cell organelles
(iv), cells (v), and tissues (vi) and organisms. (e) These fractal effects are
complemented by the chaotic effects of gravity as a non-linear force, resulting
in extreme variation of the planets, generating a diversity of potential
conditions for biogenesis, similar to the dynamic variations surrounding the
Mandelbrot set.
1:
Introduction: Scope and Design
This is the full version of a pair of twin papers, comprising a compact overview (King 2011b) which refers extensively to this paper as supporting online material. The overview presents the general principles, while this paper contains all the references and a full discussion of all the research developments and ideas.
2:
Non-linear Quantum and Cosmological Foundations of Biogenesis
Although
it is now well-known science that the universe appears to have begun in an
explosive big-bang possibly accompanied by a phase of cosmic inflation and
that these events are also associated with symmetry-breaking of the forces of nature
into the highly asymmetric weak and strong nuclear forces, electromagnetism and
gravity we experience today, the cosmological implications of this for the
existence of life and hence consciousness (King 1978) are far less
well-understood and not fully recognized.
Two
preconceptions have tended to cloud this recognition of the cosmic role of
biogenesis. The first is that life is fragile and insignificant by comparison
with the maelstrom forces of stellar energies, let alone black-holes or the
cosmic big-bang. This is criticism of lifes cosmological status is incorrect
because life is sine-qua-non the ultimate interactive consequence of cosmic
symmetry-breaking. Nowhere else do
the forces of nature enter into such complete fractal expression in complexity.
Furthermore, although lifes energetics are miniscule on a cosmic scale, they
are robust over cosmological time, to the extent that life has continued on
Earth for a full third of the universes lifetime.
The
second is that chemistry has been incorrectly perceived as a matter of
ball-and-stick molecules, of almost arbitrary structure, generally driven by
highly determined reaction conditions suited to push the process towards a few
desired products. This approach does not deal well with situations where very
simple reactants lead to increasingly complex and diverse products. In a Nature
article for the current Year of Chemistry, Ball (2011) notes the demise of
such notions, toward a dynamic view of chemical bonding, but this misconception
led to a slowing of prebiotic discovery the 20th century, so that,
despite Miller and Ureys (1959) founding work on spark syntheses mid century,
the key biogenetic pathways to replication are only beginning to be elucidated,
nearly a decade into the third millennium.
The
realities of non-linear quantum interaction are that, due to the charge
interactions of electron wave functions and atomic nuclei, molecular orbitals
form as a non-linear perturbation of the basic linearity of Hamiltonian
dynamics. The non-linear energetics that results in strong covalent and ionic
bonds does not stop there, but leads to a cascade of successively weaker
H-bonding, hydrophobic and van-der-Waals interactions, whose globally
cooperative nature is responsible for the primary, secondary, and tertiary
structures of proteins and nucleic acids, and in a fractal manner to quaternary
supra-molecular interactions, cell organelles, cells, tissues and organisms.
Fig2: (a) Symmetry-breaking
quasi-periodic table of the bioelements displays covalent optimality. (b)
Optimality of H20 in terms of internal weak-bonding expressed in its
high boiling point. (c) Evidence for a symmetry-breaking origin of the genetic
code. (d) Realized and proposed direct synthesis paths from primordial
precursors such as HCN to nucleotides (Powner et. al. (2009, 2010).
Thus,
while genetic coding and regulation is necessary for organizing the structures
of the tissues that make up our bodies and brains, it is certainly not
sufficient and can only encode organismic development because the fundamental
laws of molecular interaction, upon which such coding depends, are non-linear
and fractal. In this sense, tissue is the natural interactive full complexity
product of cosmic symmetry-breaking. The tissue of the conscious human brain
represents the Copernican pinnacle of integrated functional complexity in the
universe and lays a claim to a cosmological status, as fundamental as the
big-bang.
Fractal
molecular energetics combines with chaotic gravitational dynamics to cause an
extreme variety of local conditions in varying solar systems, which give our
own planets and their satellites an extreme diversity from one another, and
each of the many hundreds of extra-solar planets discovered and the billions of
estimated planets in our galaxy their own bewildering extremes. These
conditions lead to a situation similar to the Mandelbrot set of the quadratic
iteration, in which local states form an endlessly varying fractal domain in
the phase space of possible conditions. A Mandelbrot universe virtually
guarantees a goldilocks biogenesis cosmologically, through the dense
exploration of dynamical space by the chaotic system.
The
distribution of the bioelements shows very clear evidence of symmetry-breaking
optimizations that are a direct result of the non-linear nature of the periodic
table of the elements in which the symmetry-breaking of charge in atomic
matter, leads to a series of quantum periodicities of the s, p, d and f orbitals and their
hybrids which is not periodic energetically so that the second row elements CNO
are optimally covalent. This causes the covalent basis of life to be founded on
the splitting of H with CNO, stemming from the high energy optimally strong
multiple -CN, -CC-, and >CO bonds, which are cosmically abundant in forming
star systems (Buhl 1974) and readily undergo
polymerization to heterocyclic molecules, including the nucleic acid bases A,
U, G, C and a variety of amino acids, as well as optically active cofactors
such as porphyrins.
The
covalent symmetry-breaking of periodicity is complemented by a series of other
optimalities. The increasing electronegativity of the first row sequence CNO
leads to the optimality H2O as an extreme polar structure-invoking
medium, bifurcating molecular dynamics between hydrophilic and non-polar
phases, in addition to pH, polar and H-bonding effects, which define the
structures and dynamics of proteins, nucleic acids, membrane, ion and electron
transport - all fundamentally essential to the existence of life. The alkali
and alkaline earth elements K+/Na+ and Ca++/Mg++
are bifurcated in their ionic relationships e.g. in cell membrane potentials.
Second row elements S and P also become involved contributing unique properties
of third row element elements, weaker S-S bonds and Fe-S interactions critical
for electron transport, and the energetics of oligomeric PO43-
ions, in cellular energetics as ATP, and in catalyzing nucleic acid
polymerization and forming its backbone. Finally the electron-transferring
properties of the transition elements enter into major catalytic roles.
This
does not imply that this arrangement of bioelements is the only one in which
life could exist, as the discovery of organisms adapted to using arsenic in the
place of phosphorus, even in the DNA backbone (Wolfe-Simon et. al. 2010)
demonstrates, but it does confirm that life as we know it does have optimal
properties of a symmetry-breaking nature cosmologically. These may extend as
far as the establishment of the genetic code, where major assignments of the
first and second codon appear to be based on cosmic abundance and
hydrophilicity versus non-polarity, as well as other generic features (King
1982).
The
critical transition, for the origin of replicative life to take place, is a
stable context in which the four nucleotides comprising RNA can be generated
from primordial cosmically-abundant molecules such as HCN and HCHO and then
polymerize and become able to catalyze their own replication.
Although
the first syntheses produced the purines adenine and guanine readily, cytosine
and uracil, the complementary pyrimidine bases, making up the other half of the
pairs A-U and G-C, were not at detectable levels. However Stanley Miller, 43
years after his original pioneering experiment, with Michael Robertson, discovered
a way for the primordial pond to make them in high yield. When he added more
urea than was produced in the spark synthesis, it reacted with
cyanoacetaldehyde, another by-product, producing large amounts of pyrimidines.
(Cohen 1996, Horgan 1996).
A
major stride has recently been made which put the direct primal synthesis in a
more definitive perspective.
Sutherlands group (Powner et. al. 2009, 2010) have both produced a
prebiotically plausible route for synthesizing pyrimidine nucleotides and have
a putative pathway that could also lead to the synthesis of the purine
complements in a one-pot process. Critically in the presence of phosphate is
necessary to the polymerization pathway.
Ferris
(1996) added montmorillonite, a positively charged clay believed to be
plentiful on the young Earth, to a solution of negatively charged adenine
nucleotides, spawning RNA 10-15 nucleotides long. When these chains, clinging
to the surface of the clay, were repeatedly washed with the solution, they grew
up to 55 nucleotides long. The
discovery that RNA appears to be the catalyst of peptide-bond synthesis in the
modern ribosome (Guthrie 1992, Pace 1992, Noller et. al. 1992) and the capacity
of modified ribozymes to act as amino-acyl esterases (Picarilli et.al. 1992),
the first step in protein synthesis, establish RNA has the capacity to act as
synthetase as well as transfer, messenger and ribosomal functions.
Szostak's
group (Szostak et. al. 1995, Wilson and Szostak 1996) have evolved ribozymes
capable of a broad class of catalytic reactions. Co-researcher David Bartel has
evolved RNAs that are as efficient as some modern protein enzymes. His
ribozymes can stitch small pieces of RNA together without breaking larger
molecules apart, using high-energy tri-phosphate bonds similar to ATP (Cohen
1996). Zhang and Cech (1997, 1998) isolated RNAs that could efficiently link
specific amino acids together from a random pool of 1015 synthetic
RNAs. They also found that a small region of many of the RNAs they selected was
70 per cent identical to some regions of the ribosomal RNA. Lincoln and Joyce
(2010) have also demonstrated RNA ligation processes using complementary
catalytic RNAs which provide a plausible basis for RNA to pull itself up by
its bootstraps into reproductive autonomy.
Many
of the fundamental molecules associated with membrane excitation, including
lipids such as phosphatidyl choline and amine-based neurotransmitters, have
potentially primordial status (King 1996). Amine-based neurotransmitters, from
acetylcholine to the catecholamines and serotonin as well as simple amino acids
glutamate and GABA may have the capacity to modify membrane dynamics directly,
through polar interactions with the terminals of membrane lipids, and have
later been coopted by evolution into protein binding to ion channels and
receptors as a result of these properties.
Fig 3: (a) Catalytic
nicotine-adenine dinucleotide is essential in respiration. (b) Large and small
subunits of the ribosome are centrally and functionally RNA [pink] (c)
Molecular fossil evidence for a viral-based cellular transition from the RNA
world to DNA based chromosomes, through cellular cooption of viral RNA-directed
RNA-polymerase, followed by reverse transcriptase and finally DNA-dependent
DNA-polymerase. (d) Independent evolution of archaeal and bacterial cellular
life from a non-cellular form of life at the interface of olivine and acid,
iron-rich sea water forming lost city undersea vents able to solve the
concentration and encapsulation problems.
3:
Emergence of the Excitable Cell: From Universal Common Ancestor to Eucaryotes
There
is abundant genetic evidence for an era when RNA played the roles of both an
informational molecule and a protein-like catalyst through its tertiary
structure. The ribosome is still centrally an RNA-based functioning unit common
to all life forms, implying that protein translation evolved during the RNA
era. Eucaryote nuclear chemistry is still very much RNA-based with extensive
RNA processing. Cellular
metabolisms also depend extensively on nucleotide-based cofactors from NAD
through to cyano-cobalamin, or vitamin B12. The evidence is consistent with the
polymerases for this transition coming from viral genomes and with DNA
replication evolving independently in bacteria and archaea/eukaryotes.
Likewise
both fermentation and the cell walls and membranes of bacteria and
archaea/eukaryotes differ genetically, implying two independent evolutionary
origins. A novel unstable interface phenomenon may provide a plausible
explanation for how cellular life originated, well into the RNA era after
ribosome-based protein translation was in place (Martin and Russell 2003).
Lost city undersea vents generate a gigantic chemical garden of porous
carbonate columns at the interface of cosmically-abundant crustal mineral
olivine interacting chemically with [then acid carbonate and iron-rich] sea
water, releasing hydrogen, alkaline fluids and heat. These vents have been
found to provide a unique pore-filled active interface, conducive to the coexistence
of complex organic molecules, lipid membranes and iron-sulphur complexes, with
a proton gradient, and capable of concentrating nucleotides exponentially. This
provides a plausible environment for an open RNA-era protoplasm to survive, and
for autonomous cellular life to evolve (Lane 2009).
Fig 4: (Left) Archaean
genetic expansion around 3.3 billion years ago generated most critical genes
common to life (David and Alm 2010) (Right) Evidence of ubiquitous horizontal
transfer of genes between bacterial species at different trigger levels (Dagan
et. al. 2006).
Once
the branches of cellular life evolved, cell excitability based on ion channels
and pumps rapidly became universal. As early as 3.3 billion years ago there was
a massive genetic expansion, which gave rise to the majority of critical genes
necessary to all forms of life over a remarkably short period in evolutionary
time (David and Alm 2010). This was also accompanied by high levels of
horizontal gene transfer driven by a cross-species pan-sexuality promoted by
viruses and plasmid conjugation and transfer.
Estimates of the computing
power of the collective bacterial and archaeal genome contain some almost
astronomical figures (King 2009). To give a very rough idea of the computing
power of the combined bacterial genome alone, taking into account bacterial
soil densities (~109/g), effective surface area (~1018 cm2),
genome sizes (~106), combined reproduction and mutation rates (~10-3/s)
gives a combined presentation rate of new combinations of up to 1030
bits per second, roughly 1013 times greater than the current fastest
computer at 2 petaflops or about 1017 bit ops per second.
Corresponding rates for complex life forms would be much lower, at around 1017
per second because they are fewer in total number and have lower reproduction
rates and longer generation times, but they are still vying with the
computation rates of the fastest supercomputer on earth.
This picture of bit rates
coincides closely with the Archaean expansion scenario noted above and suggests
that evolution has been a two-phase process in which the much higher bit rates
of the collective single-celled genome, under promiscuous sexuality and
horizontal transfer, has arrived at a global genetic solution to the
notoriously intractable protein folding problems of the central metabolic,
electro-chemical and root developmental pathways, which are then later
capitalized on by multi-celled organisms, through gene duplication and loss, as
well as the creation of new specialized genes at a much lower rate. The
excitability associated with chaotically sensitive cells and conscious brains
might thus have cosmological status if evolution has successfully explored the
phase space of catalytic processes making excitability and quantum sensation possible.
The
eukaryotes appear to have evolved through a number of pivotal gene fusions,
which dramatically enriched their genomes and ultimately led to the plants,
fungi and animals. Both the respiring mitochondrion, common to eukaryotes, and
the plasmid of plants, are bacterial endosymbionts, engulfed by ancestral cells
of eukaryotes. There is further evidence that only the informational nucleic
acid-processing genes of eukaryotes originated with them and that the majority
of metabolic genes have been inherited from mitochondrial, or other bacterial
genetic fusions (Horiike et. al. 2001).
Horizontal transfer and gene
fusion has led to a situation where both sexuality and excitability, along with
all the critical components for neural dynamics including ion-channels specific
for Ca++, K+ and Na+, G-protein linked
receptors (Perez 2003) and a fast action potential are common to the spread of
eucaryote cell types, from giardia and paramecium to metazoa. Meech and Mackie
(2007) note that ion channel structure appears to have been established during
the soup of lateral gene transfers that drove bacterial evolution and that all
major classes arose before the metazoa, with several showing homology to
bacterial versions.
A fundamental question arises.
Is the sort of dynamics we associate with the conscious brain essentially a
product of the complex interconnectivity of circuitry, as artificial neural
nets and computational approaches might suggest? Or is it a fundamental aspect
of living cells, which evolved with the earliest eukaryotes?
Fig 4b: Evolutionary trees of
transcriptional elongation factor EF-2 and b-tubulin outlining the spread of
eucaryote evolution in relation to the animals and humanity (King and Carrol
2001). The spread of genes governing excitability, including ion-channels,
neurotransmitters and G-linked proteins are universal to the eucaryote tree.
Pyramidal and other neurons are
very complex dynamical systems, far from the trivial additive units which
formal McCulloch-Pitts neurons present in theoretical artificial networks.
They engage up to 104 synaptic junctions, having a variety of
excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs involving up to four or five
different types of neurotransmitter, with differing effects depending on
individual receptor types, and their location on dendrites, the cell body, or
axon-axonal connections. Neuronal synaptic connections also involve many
non-linearities, feedbacks and sigmoidal tipping points. Furthermore, as noted,
many critical features we associate with neurons, and their associated
neuroglia, in the conscious brain, including excitability and the use of
neurotransmitter molecules, are not only shared by other cells in the human
body, but extend down to the earliest single-celled eukaryotes (Mackie 1990).
Amoebae, although they lack
specific sense organelles, are highly sensitive to chemical and electrical
signals, as well as to bright light. Earlier work demonstrated membrane
potentials in Amoeba proteus (Bingley 1966) associated with pseudopod formation,
and action potentials have been found in the amoeba Chaos chaos (Marshall 1965, Tasaki
and Kamiya), Ciliates and Diatoms (Taylor 2009). In ciliated protozoa, such as Paramecium (Kung and Eckert
1972, Hennessey 2005) and Tetrahymena (Onimaru 1980) action
potentials are associated with the coordinated motile actions of cilia in
cellular locomotion, avoidance and exploration (Ramoino et. al. 2006). Paramecium
utilizes Ca++-dependent Na+ ion channels, as well as K+
channels, enabling osmotically neutral action potentials, as in metazoan
nervous systems (Saimi & Ling 1990). Paramecia possess GABA a and b
receptors (Ramoino et. al. 2004, 2006), b-adrenergic ( Wiejak et. al.
2002) and glutamate receptors (Bernal-Martnez and Ortega-Soto 2004) as well as
those for a variety of other molecules (Ladenburger et. al. 2006) essential for
sensing their chemical environment. Single celled organisms share a need for
cellular memory to sample concentration gradients, since they are too small for
differential sensing spatially.
The connection between bursting
and beating in excitable cells was established by the Chay-Rinzel model and
ensuing experiments (Chay and Rinzel 1985), which established chaotic dynamics
in neurons, pancreatic b-cell exocytosis, and inter-nodal cells in the alga Nitella (Hayashi et. al.
1982). The association between excitability and exocytosis spanning the
eukaryotes (Lledo 1997) is significant in that synaptic vesicles are produced
by exocytosis.
The aggregation of slime moulds
such as Dictyostellium is mediated by cyclic-AMP (Halloy et. al. 1998, Goldbeter
2006). The ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena pyriformis (Brizzi and Blum
1970, Essman 1987) and flagellated Crithidia jasciculata (Janakidevi et. al.
1966) utilize serotonin, and the former also metabolizes dopamine and
epinephrine (Takeda and Sugiyama 1993, Nomura 1998).Tetrahymena pyriformis also has circadian light-related
melatonin expression (Khida et. al. 1993).
Fig 5: Real-time purposive
behavior in single cells (a) Paramecium reverses, turns right and
explores a cul-de-sac. (b) Human neutrophil chases an escaping bacterium
(black), before engulfing it. (c) Chaos chaos engulfs a paramecium. Action potentials in
Chaos chaos (d) and paramecium (e). Period 3 perturbed excitations in alga Nitella indicate chaos. (g)
Frog retinal rod cells are sensitive to single quanta in an ultra-low intensity
beam, with an average rate of one photon per click, but sometimes zero, or two,
due to uncertainty in the beam.
Complex behavior is not confined
to metazoans. Both amoebae and ciliates show purposive coordinated behaviour,
as do individual human cells, such as macrophages. The multi-nucleate slime
mould Physarum polycephalum can solve shortest path mazes and demonstrate a
memory of a rhythmic series of stimuli, apparently using a biological clock to
predict the next pulse (Nakagaki et. al. 2000, Ball 2008).
Chaotic excitation provides an
excitable single cell with a generalized quantum sense organ. Sensitive
dependence would enable such a cell to gain feedback about its external
environment, perturbed by a variety of quantum modes - chemically through
molecular orbital interaction, electromagnetically through photon absorption,
electrochemically through the perturbations of the fluctuating fields generated
by the excitations themselves, and through acoustic and mechanical/osmotic
interaction.
Since such sensitivity predates
the computational function of neural nets, dynamical chaos became fundamental
to the evolution of neuronal computing. A single cell has no intercellular form
of computation and has to rely on internal genetic regulation to provide memory
and a strategy for survival, so the sensory sensitivity of the membrane in
response to internal and external cues is its key function.
When we move to the earlier
metazoa we find sponges, despite lacking a nervous system, sport
acetylcholinesterase, catcholamines, and serotonin (Mackie 1990, Wayrer et. al.
1999). Likewise protein kinases C and in particular tyrosine kinases are
universal to choanoflagellates (King N et. al. 2001, 2008) and metazoa from
sponges to humans (Kruse et. al. 1997). Coelenterates represent the first group
with genuine neurons. Serotonin neurons have been found in the coelenterate
Renilla along with catacholamines and melatonin (Kaas 2009, Anctil et. al.
1982, 1984, 1991). GABA and glutamate receptors mediate pacemaker and feeding
response in the coelenterate Hydra as well as diverse neuropeptides and
putative Hox genes (Kaas 2009).
Hydra, which supports only
a primitive diffuse neural net and whose tissues can dynamically reorganize
themselves, and whose nervous system is in continuous transformation and
dynamic reconstruction, involving inter-conversion of cell types (Koizumi and
Bode 1991, Burnett and Diehl, Bode 1992), has a rich repertoire of up to 12
forms of intuitive locomotion (King 2008), and is able to coordinate tentacle
movements, tumbling, sliding and other forms of movement using similar global
dynamics to those in amoebae and Paramecium, and much more advanced
organisms.
Thus we already have the
neurotransmitters, G-linked protein receptors, ion channels and essentially the
entire complement of neuronal machinery we associate with vertebrate and human
nervous systems. The basis of central nervous system function and dynamics is
thus common to the entire animal kingdom.
This universality continues up
the evolutionary tree so that chemicals psychoactive in humans, from LSD to
caffeine, are also known to affect the web building of spiders (Noever et. al.
1995) implying that the very different nervous system designs of arthropods and
vertebrates mask a deeper identity of dynamical basis shared by virtually all
the metazoa. We can thus see that metazoan nervous systems have arisen from the
adaptive dynamics of individual eucaryote cells, rather than being composed of
unrelated logical networks.
As we move up the evolutionary
tree to the complex nervous systems of vertebrates, we see the same dynamical
features, now expressed in whole system excitations such as the EEG, in which
excitatory and inhibitory neurons provide a basis for broad-spectrum
oscillation, phase coherence and chaos in the global dynamics, with the
synaptic organization enabling the dynamics to resolve complex
context-sensitive decision-making problems, involving memories of past
situations and adaptations to current ones. Nevertheless the immediate decision-making situations around
which life or death results, in the theatre of conscious attention, are
qualitatively similar in nature to those made by single celled organisms, such
as Paramecium, based strongly on immediate sensory input and short term
anticipation of immediate threats, in a context of remembered situations from
the past that bear upon the current existential strategy.
Fig 6: Structural overview of the
brain as a dynamical organ. (a) Major anatomical features including the
cerebral cortex, its underlying driving centres in the thalamus, and
surrounding limbic regions involving emotion and memory, including the cingulate cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. (b) Conscious
activity of the cortex is maintained through the activity of ascending pathways
from the thalamus and brain stem, including the reticular activating system and
serotonin and nor-adrenaline pathways involved in light and dreaming sleep. Processes
which enable global dynamics to be affected by small perturbations. (c)
Evidence for dynamical chaos includes modulated strange attractors (Freeman
1991), and broad spectrum excitations with moderate fractal (correlation) dimensions
(Basar et. al. 1989). These dynamics are complemented by holographic processing
across the cortex illustrated in an experimental representation of olfactory
excitations corresponding to recognized odors (Skarda and Freeman 1987). (d)
Stochastic resonance enables fractal instabilities to grow from ion channel to
neuron to hippocampal excitation (Liljenstrm and Uno 2005). (e) Chandelier
cells can facilitate an spreading of excitation to many pyramidal cells (Molnar
et. al. 2008, Woodruff and Yuste 2008). (f) Wave front coherence in processing
becomes manifest when a cue is recognized by the subject (left) (g) Correlation
matrix and dendrogram of cortical slice is consistent with fractal
self-organized criticality (Beggs and Plenz 2003, 2004).
4:
A Dynamic View of the Conscious Brain
Here follows a brief overview of
the essential features of dynamics in the conscious brain, in relation to our
purpose of uncovering the cosmology of consciousness. Further details can be
found in King (2008).
Structurally the mammalian brain
consists of the 5 to 6 layer nerve sheet of the cerebral cortex, receiving and
transmitting through the nuclei of the thalamus (with the exception of the
direct sensory pathways of smell). Overall states of consciousness are modulated
by ascending neural pathways from basal brain centers, sending dopamine,
serotonin and nor-adrenaline pathways fanning out across the cortex, regulating
conscious activity, from waking life, through sleep and dreaming, to
psychedelic experience. A looping limbic system also runs around the edge of
the cortex, providing emotional responsiveness, flight and fight sensitivity,
and the consolidation of episodic memory.
Unlike the digital computer,
which is a serial digital device based on a discrete logic of 0s and 1s, the
brain is a massively parallel dynamic organ, with only some 10 or so synaptic
junctions between sensory input and motor output. This is essential for the
brain to be able to solve complex environmental problems and immediate threats
to survival in seconds to milliseconds, which would be classically intractable
problems in computational terms. Unlike a computational process, which may take
days or years to complete, conscious processing has to be ready at all times
for split-second reactions and the role of global consciousness is clearly to
provide a dynamic conduit for integrating all the parallel attributes of the
perceived context into a vital response which anticipates threats to survival
and key opportunities, rather than to become stranded solving an unboundedly
complex problem.
This explains why, despite some
1010 neurons and 1014 synaptic junctions, we have trouble
handling mare than a simple 7 digit number in working memory, while potentially
being able to recognize millions of visual images we have seen before and
listen to one critical conversation over the babble of a crowded room.
Although the action potential of
the long axons of pyramidal cells is a semi-discrete pulse-coded analog firing
rate, many neurons and indeed those forming the organizing centre of many
processes have continuously graded potentials. The electrical activity of the
human brain, as expressed in the EEG consists of broad spectrum waves
indicative of chaos (King 1991), rather than the discrete resonances of ordered
dynamics. While some aspects of the EEG, such as the alpha rhythms of visual
relaxation, may be housekeeping activities, oscillations in the gamma band have
been associated with conscious thought processes (Crick and Koch 1992).
This is consistent with the
brain using globally-coupled oscillations in its central conscious processing,
which are chaotic in the time domain, but are holographic transforms of the
experiential envelope of senses and secondary areas spread across the regions
of the cortex in functional columns spanning the cortical layers.
Chaotic dynamics both enable
brain states to fully explore the phase space of possibilities without becoming
stuck in an inappropriate dynamic and provide sensitive dependence on unstable
inputs which provide arbitrary sensitivity to small instabilities in the event
of an uncertain response. Walter Freeman (1991), based on his studies of rabbit
olfaction, has given us a good model of perception, as a transition from
high-energy chaos to a lower energy strange attractor which provides for
learning new symbolic representations through changes in the potential energy
landscape during learning, giving a clear basis for the aha of eureka! in
insight learning in terms of a bifurcation from the unstable chaos of the
unresolved problem to the order of the clarity of the insight, explaining how a
brain-wave can come out of the blue.
The holographic picture
(Mishlove and Pribram 1998), which is consistent with the many-to-many nature
of synaptic mappings results in a cortical structure in which different
cortical regions represent varying aspects of conscious experience in much the
same way a Fourier transform represents all the frequencies in a waveform.
Sensory areas for vision, hearing, smell touch and other emotional and bodily
sensations are complemented by secondary processing areas e.g. of spatial
relations in the parietal cortex and time-related and semantic categories in
the temporal cortex. So-called Oprah Winfrey cells specific for a certain
person or face in the temporal cortex (Reddy et. al. 2009, Callaway 2009),
represent landmarks on a fractal transform space of subjective experience over
time. The ongoing process is driven and organized by centres in the frontal
prefrontal cortex forming our model of intentional action and future strategies
of life.
This
means that each experience is globally represented across the cortex in terms
of the diverse characteristics, which together make up the full context of the
so-called Cartesian theatre of subjective experience, (Baars 1997, Dennett
1991), centered on our sensory views of the world around us conditioned by our
past experiences and their semantic contexts - a term derived from the
dualistic cosmology of Rene Descartes (1644) - cogito ergo sum - who closely
identified thought with subjective consciousness: "what happens in me
such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of
it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which he is
immediately conscious.
Charles
Darwin (1871) argued that a continuity of mind exists between humans and other
animals. It is the innate capacity to have subjective experiences, and what
influence these have on organismic survival, that we need to examine in the
long-term evolutionary context, because these may arise from adaptive
advantages running back to single celled eukaryotes. This is a completely
different question from the unique properties of the human mind, in terms of
language and creative intellect, that separate humanity from most, or all,
other animals (Hauser 2009).
Barrs
(2001) describes the theatre of the conscious in terms of global workspace -
working memory and its associated backdrops. Baars approach suggests that consciousness is associated
with the whole brain in integrated correlated activity and is thus a property
of the brain as a whole functioning entity rather than a product of some
specific area, or system, such as the supplementary motor cortex (Eccles 1982,
Fried et. al. 1992, Haggard et. al. 2005). Furthermore, the approach rather
neatly identifies the distinction between unconscious processing and conscious
experience in terms of whether the dynamic is confined to local or regional
activity or is part of an integrated coherent global response. It is also
consistent with there being broadly only one dominant stream of conscious
thought and experience at a given time, as diverse forms of local processing
give way to an integrated global response. A series of experiments, many by
teams working with Stanislas Dehaene, involving perceptual masking of brief
stimuli to inhibit their entry into conscious perception (Sergent et. al. 2005,
Sigman and Dehaene 2005, 2006, Dehaene and Changeux 2005, De. Cul et. al. 2006,
2009, Gaillard et. al. 2009) studies of pathological conditions such as
multiple sclerosis (Reuter et. al. 2009, Schnakers 2009 ) and brief episodes in
which direct cortical electrodes are being used during operations for
intractable epilepsy (Quiroga et.
al. 2008) have recently tended to confirm the overall features of Baars model
of consciousness founded on the global work space (Ananthaswamy 2009 a,b, 2010).
This
couples with a recently discovered system called the default network (Fox
2008), which was unearthed when background readings discarded from many brain
scan studies were found to have common dynamical features. It has been proposed that the default
network is an active brain process we drift into when not preoccupied in more
essential tasks dominating our attention, and that it may have adaptive value
in rehearsing strategic situations important for our survival. One can loosely identify the default
network with the process of daydreaming, reminiscence, worrying and idle
thought, but in these terms it looks clearly like a manifestation of global
work space in action and hence provides another view on the global mechanisms
being brought into play in conscious experience (Vanhaudenhuyse 2010).
Since
Libets original experiments (1983, 1989) in which he detected a readiness potential
in the supplementary motor cortex before the free decision to press a button
was consciously registered by the subject, there has been debate about whether
conscious free will, or subconscious brain processes, are the source of our
decision-making. Recently experiments testing this question more closely have
only added to the debate. Trevena & Miller (2010) allowed subjects to
decide whether or not to press the button and found the same readiness
potential regardless of the decision to act. They also found no correlation
with the side of the brain activated when either left or right hands were used
to press the button. Their results, which have been widely discussed
(Ananthaswamy 2009, Geert et. al. 2010, Gomes 2010, suggest that Libets brain
states simply indicate non-specific readiness, although other studies by
Brass's group (Soon et. al. 2008) do appear to show activity in the frontopolar
cortex, which was statistically predictive of the decision, up to 10 s in
advance of conscious decision-making, and then in the parietal cortex
stretching from the precuneus into posterior cingulate cortex, relating to
timing and handedness. The difficulty here is that the brain may need to
anticipate rapid actions by indeed building frontal cortex models which are
statistically predictive of lokely outcomes which are then called on by
conscious decision-making to minimize latent response times.
We can sense the many cortical
areas that come into play in the Cartesian theatre and the balance between
conscious and subconscious processes from mental activities, such as recalling
that it was raining when watching Oprah Winfrey start up her new TV channel,
while at the same time anxiously rehearsing a talk we have to give, trying to
visualize the easiest route to drive to get there, and desperately trying to
remember a the name of a colleague we will meet there, which later pops into
our awareness out of the blue.
The brain may distinguish
attended conscious experience from fragmented sub-conscious processing and the ground-swell
of competing neurological excitatory noise by the wave-front coherence of
coupled neurons oscillating together in phase, while the other unrelated
out-of-phase signals do not achieve a global resonance and tend to cancel. This
phase front processing is mathematically homologous to quantum measurement
(Pribram 1993), where quantum uncertainty dictates that we can measure the
energy of a wave-particle only by counting the number of coherent wave fronts
passing over a time interval.
There are a number of processes,
from the amplifying dynamics of certain dedicated cell types such as chandelier
cells (Molnar et. al. 2008, Woodruff and Yuste 2008), through states of
stochastic resonance (Liljenstrm and Uno 2005), to self-organized criticality
(Beggs and Plenz 2003, 2004) and chaotic sensitivity itself, which provide a
neurophysiological basis to support arbitrary sensitivity of the global
dynamic, when in unstable equilibrium at a tipping point, enabling a single
neuron or even a single ion channel or receptor complex to tip the global
balance when the global conditions warrant it, making it potentially sensitive
to quantum perturbations.
This
type of wave-based dynamic processing gives the brain unique capacity to
combine the sensitivity of chaos and the intrinsic uncertainty and entanglement
of quantum excitations in a way that is impossible for current digital
computers, and which may provide a means for direct conscious experience in
real time to complement the processing power of our brains to ensure our
survival, explaining how consciousness emerged in evolution.
Fig 8: Features of quantum
processing in proposed models. (a) Microtubule MAP proteins as envisaged in the
OOR model. (b) The ensuing relationship between classical and quantum computing
and consciousness. (c, d) gated K+ ion channels from MacKinnons
group (Zhou et. al. 2001). (e) Fractal kinetics in the channels (Liebovitch et.
al.) (f) Synaptic junction as in Eddingtons (1935) suggestion of quantum
uncertainty of the vesicle.
5: Chaos, Quantum Dynamics
and Conscious Anticipation
The two most profound questions
confounding science about the brain are (1) how and why brain function
generates subjective experience, which would seem extraneous to computational
efficiency and (2) whether there is any basis for our continuing impression
that our subjective conscious intentions can actually be transformed into
physical consequences in acts of free-will, when the physical determinacy of
ongoing brain states would appear to be necessary and sufficient to determine
all outcomes for the organism, leaving our subjectively conscious impressions
of personal autonomy and intentionality a mere delusion.
Here we want to explore as
simply and directly as possible how known functions, central to neurodynamics
might be able to exploit quantum uncertainty, or quantum entanglement, to
enhance survival prospects of the organism. If the brain uses transitions out
of chaos in its processing, it makes it possible for an unstable brain state,
poised at a tipping point, to become arbitrarily sensitive to neurons, or ion
channels, in the circuits ultimately sensitive the change and hence manifest
quantum indeterminacy.
The immediate question that
arises is, how could quantum uncertainty or entanglement at this point aid the
process and hence the survival of the organism? Is this just precipitating a
random process or is there a way in which quantum sensitivity might be able to
aid the survival of the organism? Physicists have struggled with this question
and have come up with a variety of answers, from the pilot wave theory of
David Bohm et. al. (1981, 1985), to Roger Penroses (1989, 1994) objective
reduction, based on graviton interactions.
Since
the birth of quantum mechanics, both physicists and prominent brain scientists
have drawn attention to the fact that the quantum universe is not deterministic
and that quantum uncertainty could provide a loophole through which conscious
free will might not be in conflict with biology. A number of proposals have
been made. Eddington (1935, 1939) and Eccles (1966, 1970) discussed the
possibility of quantum-mechanical action of the vesicle and pointed out that
the uncertainty of position of a vesicle of 400 oA diameter and mass 3 x 10-17g
is about 30oA, comparable with the thickness of the membrane.
Concluding that intentional volition might then be inconsistent with the chance
probability-based calculations of particle statistic, Eddington then
effectively suggested a form of hidden correlation in sub-quantum dynamics: a
correlated behaviour of the individual particles of matter, which he assumed to
occur for matter in liaison with mind. Walker (1977) noted quantum tunneling in
synaptic transmission and Eccles (1986) noted the relation between mental
events, neural events and quantum probability fields. David Bohm (1980)
introduced the notion of implicate order generating both consciousness and
the physical universe. Henry Stapp (2007) described the interaction of
consciousness with the physical universe in terms of mental collapse of the
wave function influencing the physical brain state in a manner that involves
choice. Eccles (1969) took a more direct position of emergent mentalism,
resulting in an ongoing debate about how the conscious mind might interact with
neurodynamics (Sperry 1987, 1989, 1992, Vandervert 1991a,b).
Central to many ideas of quantum
brain dynamics is the notion of coherent excitation (Frolich 1968, Umezawa 1993) possibly through a quantum field
associated with the brain. Several
theories of quantum consciousness introduce additional constructs, for which
there is little experimental evidence or demonstrated relevance to actual
neurodynamics. Frolichs theory later elaborated by others (Jibu & Yasue
1995, Vitiello 2002) proposes that the electric
dipoles of the water molecules constitute a quantum field, with corticons as
the quanta, in addition to coherent neuronal excitations. This cortical field
is postulated to interact with quantum coherent waves generated by the
biomolecules in neurons in the neuronal network as a means, for order to be
maintained through long-range dipole interactions, which not only interact with
the neuronal network, but can also function to control it. An even more
controversial proposal involving replicatable DNA water structures has been
reported (Coghlan 2011).
A pivotally influential theory
developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff makes one of the most detailed
attempts to sketch out a plausible theory of quantum consciousness. Penrose (1989, 1994) first developed
ideas of how objective reduction might occur outside quantum measurement,
through gravitational interaction, through a non-computable influence embedded
in the fundamental level of space-time geometry, from which mathematical
understanding and consciousness derived. This attempts to avoid the double bind
of physical causality and quantum randomness of collapse, which appears to have
no utility for consciousness or free will. He was then joined by Stuart
Hameroff (Hameroff and Watt 1982, Haglan et. al. 2002, Hameroff 2006) who
suggested that microtubules might be able to function as quantum computers at
the molecular level, which might be linked to Penroses reduction process. This
led to the orchestrated objective reduction of OOR view of consciousness.
Hameroff and Penrose
(2003) note that tubulin exists in two forms and could thus enter a quantum
superposition of states. They thus envisage tubulin acting as a quantum
cellular automation, interleaving between classical and quantum computational
states. However microtubules are extensively involved in transport of essential
molecules and whole organelles, as well as cytoskeletal architecture and
synaptic growth, and it is unclear they have a direct role in the fast forms of
excitation of the electrochemical states we associate with conscious awareness.
In the OOR model,
consciousness is a passive result of a quantum computation, which occurs in the
pre-conscious state and is resolved objectively by a self-energy splitting of
the gravitational centres of mass of the superimposed states in objective
reduction and conscious awareness emerges only subsequently, based on the
outcome. The model proposes the neuron can very rapidly alternate quantum
computing with normal function by temporarily isolating the microtubules from
the membrane through disassociating the linking MAP proteins (to avoid quantum
decoherence effects). This would mean the quantum computation is isolated from
the global brain state during the quantum computation cycle.
This theory has led to more
discussion and debate than any other. Tegmark (2000) made a prominent critique
of the model, claiming quantum decoherence would destroy the proposed
mechanisms over much too shorter time scales. Hagan, Hameroff and Tuszyński (2002), and Hameroff et. al. (2002) responded
with further versions of the theory. Hameroff (2006, 2009) has further proposed
that condensates in microtubules in one neuron can link with microtubule
condensates in other neurons and glial cells via gap junctions and thus
generate an extensive quantum state suggested to be a Bose-Einstein condensate.
However these ideas have also been subject to criticisms of their viability
(Georgiev 2007, 2009a,b, McKemmish et. al. 2009). As well as critiquing the OOR
model, Georgiev (2003, Georgiev et al. 2007) has also investigated the role
solitons could play in microtubule-based processing, and supports some of ORs
conclusions.
Part of the
difficulty of the overall theory is that, although it proposes very specific
processes, both the unusual interpretation of quantum physics and central
emphasis on microtubules in brain function, are not generally accepted ideas in
their fields although an experimental test of OR has been proposed (Marshall
et. al. 2003). A Bose-Einstein condensate would provide an extreme form of
quantum coherence, which would present the same problems for brain state
differentiation that EM field theories have. OOR itself invites an
epiphenomenalistic interpretation of consciousness in which the notions of
personal autonomy and free will take a passive role to objective reduction.
Quantum cell-automaton microtubule computing stands as an extraneous addition
to existing essential biological functions. It is hard to see how microtubules
can carry out these functions efficiently if they are also harnessed to arcane
forms of non-algorithmic quantum computing on a switch-on switch-off basis.
The evolutionary
principle is an important test here. What role could such quantum computing
conceivably have in Paramecium, or Hydra, which do possess fully developed
microtubules? This problem does not apply to membrane excitation, where any
quantum properties are integral to, and consistent with, known cellular
function central to how neurodynamics operates.
Bernroider (2003,
2005) has a different model for quantum interaction closer to the prominent
features of neuronal excitation - that quantum coherence may be sustained in
ion channels for long enough to be relevant for neural processes. He proposes that
the channels could be entangled with surrounding lipids and proteins and with
other channels in the same membrane. Bernroider bases his work on recent
studies of the potassium (K+) ion channel by MacKinnon and
co-workers (Jiang et. al. 2003, Zhou et. al. 2001, Morais-Cabral et. al. 2001,
Doyle et. a. 1998) who have shown that the K+-specific ion filter
works by holding two K+ ions bound to water structures induced by
protein side chains that have a structure consistent with models of quantum
computing using ion traps and that the correct interpretation of the action of
the ion channel is through quantum coherence, possibly extending to entangled
states between ion channels as well.
David Chalmers (2003) notes collapse
dynamics leaves a door wide open for an interactionist interpretation with
mind and body mutually interacting as separate entities. He suggests " the
most promising version of such an interpretation allows conscious states to be
correlated with the total quantum state of a system, with the extra constraint
that conscious states (unlike physical states) can never be superposed.
This is where we now take the
discussion. The natural complement to conscious experience and willful
decision-making is not just the ion channel or microtubule, but the whole brain
dynamic. To develop a realistic theory of consciousness, we thus have to
consider how whole brain states might be capable of forms of quantum
interaction and we need to understand how this might take place in terms of the
really central neurophysiological processes common to all excitable cells. In
terms of the global brain processes believed to be the signature of conscious
experience, rather than subconscious processing, chaotic and unstable fractal
dynamics based on self-organized criticality become key to providing a link
between the global states of consciousness and the molecular and quantum level.
Non-linear chaotic dynamics
provides several attributes pertinent to this process. Non-linear oscillatory
couplings have a natural propensity for coherent excitation through
mode-locking, providing a natural mechanism for wave-front coherence and for
solving the binding problem how diverse cerebral processing comes
together. Freeman (1991) has drawn attention to the idea that the oscillations
of the EEG are driven through cyclic excitation of cortical excitatory and
inhibitory neurons. Modulating the lateral connections between inhibitory
neurons to enhance the nonlinear feedback would provide a direct means
of drawing closely related frequencies into phase synchrony on a common step of
the fractal devils staircase of mutually locked states. Chaotic dynamics is,
by definition, arbitrarily sensitive to small perturbations, and we have seen,
several neurophysiological processes, from chaos, through stochastic resonance,
to self-organized criticality, which could make it possible for a critically
poised global dynamic to become sensitive to local influences, down to the
level of the ion channel.
Many aspects of synaptic release
are highly non-linear, with many feedback loops involved in the biochemical
pathways. A single vesicle excites up to 2000 ion channels, so a smaller
fluctuation could set off a critically-poised ion channel and trigger a chain
reaction of excitation. In addition to being candidates for quantum coherence,
as noted above, voltage gated ion channels display fractal kinetics consistent
with a quantum fractal model of protein conformational dynamics (Liebovitch
1987a, b, 1992). Ion channels, such as that for acetyl-choline display
non-linear (quadratic) concentration dynamics, being excited by two molecules,
consistent with chaotic dynamics at level of the ion channel.
Fig 9: Wheeler delayed choice
experiment (1) shows that a decision can be made after a photon from a distant
quasar has traversed a gravitationally lensing galaxy by deciding whether to
detect which way the photon traveled or to demonstrate it went both ways by
sampling interference. The final state at the absorber thus appears to be able
to determine past history of the photon. Quantum erasure (2) likewise enables a
distinction already made, which would prevent interference, to be undone after
the photon is released. Feynman diagrams (3) show similar time-reversible
behavior. In particular time reversed electron scattering (d) is identical to
positron creation-annihilation. (4a) In the transactional interpretation (Cramer
1983), a single photon exchanged between emitter and absorber is formed by
constructive interference between a retarded offer wave (solid) and an advanced
confirmation wave (dotted). (b) EPR experiments of quantum entanglement
involving pair-splitting are resolved by combined offer and confirmation waves,
because confirmation waves intersect at the emission point. Contingent
absorbers of an emitter in a single passage of a photon (c). Collapse of
contingent emitters and absorbers in a transactional match-making (d). (5)
Scarring of the wave function of the quantum stadium along repelling orbits
(Gutzwiller 1992). (6) Generation of quantum entanglement by quantum chaos in
the quantum kicked top (Chaudhury et. al. 2009, Steck 2009)..
The belief that quantum
non-locality suppresses classical chaos, at least in closed systems, in
processes such as scarring of the wave function (Gutzwiller 1992) received a
timely clarification when it was discovered that systems with more than one
quantum mode are liable to enter a state of quantum entanglement when one mode
is in a quantum state corresponding to chaos (Chaudhury et. al. 2009, Steck
2009). The experimental system uses a suspended Cs atom, which is both in a
magnetic field and hit by a laser to give a double twist to the orbits. When
the atom is stimulated in a manner corresponding to the chaotic regime, the
electronic and nuclear spin states become entangled. This shows that, in
addition to the wave function 'scarring' the repelling unstable orbits with
attractive probabilities, suppressing chaos, the quantum system
preferentially becomes entangled with a coupled system. Hence molecular kinetics,
which are chaotic billiards are likely to lead to entangled quanta throughout
the tissue. Chaotic brain dynamics may thus lead to a complex quantum entangled
state if there is a chaotic link between the global and quantum levels. One characteristic of time-dependent quantum 'chaos' is transient chaotic behavior ending up in a periodic orbital scar as wave spreading occurs. This would suggest that chaotic sensitivity, with an increasing dominance by quantum uncertainty over time, would contribute to which entanglements ultimately occur in a given kinetic encounter.
The evolutionary argument is a
potent discriminator of models of consciousness. We need to think of forms of
generation of consciousness, which fit naturally into the emergence of most, if
not all, key genetic pathways long before the emergence of metazoa. This means
the essential biophysical or quantum attributes making consciousness possible
should be shared, not just by humans or higher levels of computation we
associate only with human cognition, but common at least to all mammals,
probably all metazoa and plausibly all eukaryotes. If we have theories of
consciousness, which can have a basis only in forms of quantum computing which
would only be meaningful in a human cognitive context, and require radical
redirections of essential cellular structures to achieve this, but have no
basis in the survival of simple animals or single cells, the theory doesnt
fulfill the evolutionary test.
Hence the point of view in this
report is based on central neurodynamic processes emerging from the
excitability of single celled eukaryotes and fundamental properties of quantum
theory. The explanation uses a version of quantum theory called the
transactional interpretation. However this is not essential to the argument,
since its predictions coincide largely or exclusively with those of conventional
quantum mechanics (Afshar 2005, 2206, Afshar et. al. 2007, Unruh 2007, Georgiev
2007, 2008), but it does emphasize future boundary conditions, which could play
a part in conscious anticipation. It also has an attribute in common with
Penroses idea of non-algorithmic computing, shared with pair-splitting EPR
quantum entanglement experiments (Aspect 1981, 1982a,b), in that the boundary
conditions do not permit a classically-causal exploitation, but this would not
result in a contradiction, because the brain state will be uncertain, and the
minds anticipatory insight comes out of the blue as a coincidental hunch.
However, if subjective consciousness has a complementary role to brain
function, correlated with coherent, or entangled, quanta emitted and absorbed
by the biological brain, it is then correlated with events in the brains
future states, as well as having access to memories of the past.
The Feynman diagrams of quantum
interactions point out a fundamental issue of quantum field theory, in that it
is temporally reversible. We have a space-time diagram and interconnections by
real or virtual particles across space-time, but in principle the process is
micro-reversible and indeed the Feynman diagram for electron scattering, when
the electron path is time reversed, becomes precisely that for positron
creation and annihilation. Moreover in real quantum experiments, such as
quantum erasure and the Wheeler delayed choice experiment, it is possible to
change how an intervening wave-particle behaves by making different
measurements after the wave-particle has passed through the apparatus. Indeed
all forms of quantum entanglement also possess this time-symmetric property.
Feynmans absorber theory
(Davies 1974), which noted that the predictions of quantum mechanics were
preserved if we instead considered the time-reversed interactions of the
absorbers, was subsequently extended by John Cramer (1983,1986) into the
transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which space-time
handshaking between the future and past becomes the basis of each real quantum
interaction.
Here the emitter of a particle
sends out an offer wave forwards and backwards in time, whose energies
cancel. The potential absorbers
respond with a confirmation waves, and the real quantum exchange arises from
constructive interference between the retarded component of the chosen
emitters offer wave and the advanced time-reversing component of the chosen
absorbers confirmation wave. The boundary conditions determining the exchange
thus involve both past and future states of the universe. Upon wave function
collapse the exchanged real particle traveling from the emitter to the absorber
is identical with its negative energy anti-particle traveling backwards in
time.
Regardless of the particular
interpretation of quantum mechanics, an exchanged particle has a wave function
existing throughout the space-time interval in which it exists, so any process
involving collapse of a wave function has boundary conditions consisting of potential
absorbers extending in principle throughout space-time involving future
boundary conditions. The subtle
involvement of advanced interactions in entanglement becomes abundantly clear
in pair-splitting experiments involving two entangled particles where
measurement e.g. of the polariztion of one particle immediately results in the
other having complementary polarization although neither had a defined
polarization beforehand. The only way this correlation can be maintained within
the sub-quantum realm is through the wave function extending back to the
creation event of the pair and forward again in time to the other particle. To
the extent that consciousness might be involved in the collapse of wave
functions of emitted and absorbed excitons, it is sampling a nascent history
extending into the futures of the emission events.
This could be a universal
quantum phenomenon, which is not understood, because quantum measurement
generally depends on detecting absorbed particles, either individually in
counters, or statistically in spectra. Emission events are generally detected
by sampling the emitted quantum, effectively an absorption, resulting in
decoherence. However, if subjective consciousness has a complementary role to
brain function, correlated with coherent, or entangled, quanta emitted and
absorbed by the biological brain, it is then correlated with events in the
brains future states, as well as having access to memories of the past.
A
possible basis for the emergence of subjective consciousness, which could also
be pivotal in explaining the source of free-will, is thus that the excitable
cell gained a fundamental form of anticipation of threats to survival as well
as strategic opportunities, through anticipatory quantum non-locality induced
by chaotic excitation of the cell membrane in which the excitable cell becomes
both an emitter and absorber of its own excitations, modulated by the global
constraints of the process into distinct quantum modes.
Unlike
quantum computing, which depends on not being disturbed by decoherence caused
by interaction with other quanta, the transactional principle applies to all
real particle exchanges, and the boundary conditions remain, even if a more
elaborate interaction, involving particle scattering, takes place, so stringent
arguments in terms of decoherence may not apply. This may be a fundamental
quantum property shared by all physical systems, including macroscopic systems
with coherent resonance. The coherent global excitations in the gamma range
researchers associate with ongoing conscious states, may thus be precisely the
anticipatory excitons in the quantum model.
Such excitation sensitivity could nevertheless also prime the organism for related processes, including quantum entanglement and quantum computing. Quantum entanglement has been observed in healthy tissues, in quantum coherence imaging (Warren 1998, Samuel 2001) and has been proposed to play a possible role in bird navigation (Buchanan 2008), with entangled electrons lasting up to 100 microseconds (Courtland 2011). Excitations in photosynthetic antennae have also been shown to perform spatial quantum computing (Engel et. al. 2007, McAlpine 2010), and finally quantum vibration. and not merely molecular shape fitting to receptors, has been shown to mediate olfactory preferences in fruit flies (Courtland, Rachel 2011 Fly sniffs molecule's quantum vibrations New Scientist 14 Feb) opening the field to similar effects in nervous systems, bringing enzyme activation energy transition states and synaptic transmission using quantum tunneling (Walker 1977) and Bernroider’s (2003, 2005) ion-channel channel proposals into natural context. The solotonic nature of the action potential and potentially coherent EEG excitations could lead to entangled dynamics of individual ion channels giving the cell and coupled neurosystems a basis for global entanglement.
By
making the organism sensitive to a short envelope of time extending from the
present into the immediate future, as well as the past, the subjective
consciousness of complex animals could thus gain an evolutionary advantage
making the organism acutely sensitive to anticipated threats to survival as
well as hunting and foraging opportunities. It is these primary needs, guided
by the nuances of hunch and familiarity, rather than complex formal
calculations, that the highly complex central nervous systems of vertebrates
have evolved to successfully handle catching prey and being sensitively
wary of the shadows on the forking paths down to the water hole. Such temporal
anticipation (Dunne 1962) need not be of causal efficacy but just provide a
small statistical advantage, as noted in Darryl Bems recent experiments on
anticipation (Aldhous 2010), particularly if complemented by computational brain
processes providing the context for such intuition.
These
objectives are shared in precisely the same way by single-celled organisms and
single cells in our own bodies. Because of the vastly longer evolutionary time
since the Archaean expansion than the Cambrian metazoan radiation and the fact
that all the components of neuronal excitability were already present when the
metazoa emerged, the logical conclusion is that quantum anticipation was an
evolutionary feature of single celled eukaryotes, long before the metazoa
evolved.
It
may be hard to comprehend the notion of cellular consciousness, but it is
equally difficult to directly envisage the consciousness of another human or
animal, and we do so, only through common insights about our reported mental
states and the enhancements to our own consciousness that come from the rich
presence of mirror neurons in our own brains (Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004)
giving our subjective model of reality a sense of attunement with others,
particularly mammals with whom we share an emotional resonance. This view of
consciousness could be associated with other quantum sensitive phenomena whose
outcomes are unpredictable, including the uncertainty of fundamental particles.
If the free-will theorem (Conway & Kochen 2006, Goldstein et. al. 2010) has any validity, will would
also extend to quanta.
6: Quantum Sensitivity,
Sensory Transduction and Subjective Experience
One of the mysteries that
distinguish the richness of subjective conscious experience from the colorless
logic of electrodynamics is that sensory experiences of vision, sound, smell
and touch are richly and qualitatively so different that it is difficult to see
how mere variations in neuronal firing organization can give rise to such
qualitatively different subjective affects. How is it that when dreaming, or in
a psychedelic reverie, we can experience ornate visions, hear entrancing music,
or smell fragrances as rich, real, intense and qualitatively diverse as those
of waking life?
Fig 7: Expression of
rhodopsin in the CNS shows both strong selective neuronal expression and a
focal expression in the occipital cortex consistent with expression in the
primary visual areas.
Since the senses are actually
fundamental quantum modes by which biological organisms can interact with the
physical world, this raises the question whether subjective sensory experience
is in some way related to the quantum modes by which the physical senses
communicate with the world.
Clearly our senses are sensitive
to the quantum level. Individual frog rod cells have been shown to respond to
individual photons, the quietest sound involves movements in the inner ear of
only the radius of a hydrogen atom and single molecules are sufficient to
excite pheromonal receptors.
Similar modes of quantum
interaction may occur in the central nervous system. At a basic level, all
excitable cells have ion channels, which undergo conformation changes
associated with voltage, and orbital or ligand-binding, both of internal
effectors such as G-proteins and externally via neurotransmitters, such as
acetyl-choline. They also have osmotic and mechano-receptive activation, as in
hearing, and can be also activated directly and reversibly by photoreception in
certain species. At a ground
level, all conformation changes of ion channels are capable of exchanging
photons, phonons, mechano-osmotic effects and orbital perturbations,
representing a form of quantum synesthesia. Since the brain uses up to 40% of
our metabolic energy for functions with little or no direct energy output, it
is very plausible that some of the dissipated energy could be involved in
generating novel forms of interaction.
Research on gap junctions
(Dermietzel 1998, LeBeau et. al. 2003, Hormuzdi et. al. 2004) has also shown
that these direct electro-conductive junctions may play a part in maintaining
excitations in the gamma range thought to be coupled to active thought
processes and even higher frequencies up to 100 kHz, detected in the
hippocampus (Draghun et. al. 1998, Buhl et. al. 2003). Electrical junctions do
not occur among pyramidal cells but have been found to occur in fast-spiking
and low threshold spiking populations of inhibitory neurons in the cortex
(Galaretta et. al. 1999, Gibson et. al. 1999, Fries et. al. 2002).
Recent research in whole genome
mapping of the mouse brain (Lein et. al. 2007, Allen Brain Atlas) has made it
possible to investigate the potential central nervous function of genes that
might otherwise be associated primarily with peripheral sensory transduction.
All of the following molecules are expressed in the mouse brain (King 2007) at
least in the form of RNA transcripts, as well in their role in sensory organs.
The first putative transduction molecule for mammalian touch, stomatin-like
protein 3 (SLP3, or Stoml3) has been reported (Wetzel et. al. 2007), and
putative molecules in the auditory transduction pathway, epsin, and cadherin 23
or otocadherin (Parkinson & Brown 2002, Di Palma et. al. 2001) have only
been reported in the last five years and otoferlin in 2006 (Parsons 2006, Roux
et. al. 2006). In parallel with the usual cilia-based photo-transducer molecule
c-opsin are retinal ganglion cells, which use melanopsin, or r-opsin related to
insect opsins, which depolarize rather than hyperpolarize (Fernald 2006, Su et.
al. 2006). Both types of opsin also work in opposition in the reptile parietal
(pineal) eye. Encephalopsin has also been found in the brain and other tissues
(Blackshaw & Snyder 1999).
The occurrence of putative
sensory transduction genes in the central nervous system is consistent with a
novel biophysical model (King 2007) - that the distributed functioning of the
central nervous system provides an 'internal sensory system' which can generate
abstracted experiences forming an 'internal model of reality' using the same
physical principles as are involved in sensory transduction in a bi-directional
manner, enabling coherent generation and reception of biophysical excitations.
There are however problems with this picture. While vision and olfaction
mediate excitation indirectly through G-protein linked receptors, hearing
occurs directly through the stereocilia of the inner ear deforming mechanically
sensitive ion channels. It is far from obvious how these processes could be
activated reversibly in the CNS.
Nevertheless the idea that
additional modes of quantum communication may occur in the brain receives
continuing interest. Several consciousness researchers have proposed that
neural excitation is associated with electromagnetic fields, which might play a
formative role in brain dynamics (Pocket 2000, McFadden 2002). McFadden
proposes that the digital information from neurons is integrated to form a
conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field in the brain. Such a field
could help explain how consciousness is bound together into one coherent state,
however it remains unclear whether a coherent electromagnetic field would
retain the complexity required for brain function and why coherent synaptic
activation of coupled neurosystems wouldnt achieve the same result.
Nevertheless Gray (2004) claims there is little or no real evidence for such
effects.
Attention has recently been
focused again on biophotons (Popp et. al. 1988, 1992, 2002) as a possible basis
of processing in the visual cortex based on quantum releases in mitochondrial
redox reactions (Rahnama et. al. 2010, Bkkon et. al. 2010). Microtubules have
also been implicated (Cifra et. al. 2010).
7:
Complementarity, Symmetry-breaking, Subjective Consciousness, and Cosmology
This
leads us to the ultimate questions and paradoxes of what is the deepest and
most perplexing chasm facing the scientific model of reality in the third
millennium. What is the existential nature of subjective consciousness,
including its many manifestations, from waking life, through dreaming to
psychedelic and meditative experience, and does it have a cosmological status
in relation to the physical universe?
The
key entities forming the existential cosmos all appear to be symmetry-broken
complementarities. Quanta manifest as wave-particles with complementary
discrete particle and continuous wave aspects, which cannot both be sampled
simultaneously. The fundamental forces are symmetry broken in a manner that
results in complementary force-radiation bearing bosons and matter forming
fermions. In the standard model these have strongly symmetry broken properties,
with completely differing collections of particles. Supersymmetry attempts to
assert a deeper symmetry between bosons and fermions in which each boson has a
fermion partner to balance their positive and negative energy contributions,
broken by fundamental force diversification, but other theories, capitalizing
on E8s 112 bosonic and 128 fermionic root vectors completing E8s 240
dimensions, suggest this symmetry-breaking could be fundamental (Fielder and
King 2010). In a real sense the conscious brain forms the culminating
interaction in complexity of cosmic symmetry breaking so could require a theory
as complicated to solve the dimensions of consciousness.
Fig 10: Psychedelic and dreaming
states provide conscious experiences as intense and subjectively veridical as
real world sensory experiences, but with very different structure and dynamics
(Andrew Ostin http://psion005.deviantart.com/,
Memory of the Future Oscar Dominguez 1939)
The
relationship between subjective consciousness and the physical universe
displays a similar complementarity with profound symmetry breaking. The hard
problem of consciousness research (Chalmers 1995) underlines the fundamental
differences between subjective qualia and the continuity of the Cartesian
theatre on the one hand, and the objective, analyzable properties of the
physical world around us. This leads Chalmers to discount both conventional
theories and quantum theories of consciousness as adequate as they stand to
give rise to consciousness, although this position would not appear to discount
conscious free-will being complementary to a quantum process whose outcome was
unpredictable.
The
existential status of subjective consciousness also displays properties that
have the potential to put it on a cosmological footing. Although we depend on a pragmatic view
of the real world, knowing we will pass out if concussed and die if we cut our
veins, from birth to death, the only veridical reality we experience is the
envelope of subjective conscious experience. It is only through the consensual
regularities of subjective consciousness that we come to know and accept the real
world and discover its natural and scientific secrets. As pointed out by Indian
philosophy, this suggests that, in some sense, mind is finer or more
fundamental than matter, despite the appearance of annihilating forces in the
universe at large.
Some
interpretations of quantum theory (Wigner 1970) suggest that the consciousness
of the observer may be necessary for reduction of the wave packet, from a
quantum superposition of states, to one outcome or another e.g. in
Schrdingers cat paradox. Certainly, although quantum predictions give only
superimposed probabilities, we always witness real outcomes the cat is
alive or dead not hovering uncertainly between. One cosmological
interpretation of consciousness is that it functions to solve this problem of
super-abundance, by reducing the probability multiverses to the unique course
of history we know and witness. This view of the consciousness supports many of
the conclusions of biocentrism (Lanza 2009).
Similar
symmetry-broken complementarities apply to the biological world, where the
dyadic sexes of complex organisms and many eukaryotes are both complementary
and symmetry broken, with themes of complementary discreteness and continuity
even more obviously expressed at the level of sperm and ovum than in our
nevertheless highly symmetry broken human organismic sexual forms.
We
also have other manifestations, dynamical in the complementarity of chaos and
order in generating complexity, and strategically in the complementarity of
cooperation and defection in the Prisoners Dilemma of game theory, which leads
to logical paradox, in which neither can be fully eliminated and successful
strategies, such as tit-for-tat, involve a mix. For this reason we give the
name Sexual Paradox (Fielder and King 2004, 2010) to these forms of
symmetry-broken complementarity.
Introducing
a further assumption, such as Bohms implicate order, or Penroses platonic
realm, is not without its rationale, as the current description of the
quantum-relativistic universe is incomplete, and a variety of pre-theories have
been proposed such as the preons, or rishon triplets, which could make up both
quarks and leptons, but as things stand the principle of symmetry-broken
complementarity appears to lie at the very source of our cosmology.
The
mental viewpoint leads to a perspective on consciousness as cosmological
complement to the physical universe, however, taking either side of this
complementarity as paramount appears to lead to paradox. The lessons of quantum
and fundamental particle complementarity and symmetry-breaking, sexuality and
with it the Yin-Yang complementarity of the Tao and of Shakti-Shiva in Tantric
mind-world cosmologies, let alone the essential respect for the physical
universe for our own survival, places the source of the cosmological mystery in
the symmetry-broken complementarity of objective universe and subjective
consciousness.
8:
Conclusion
This
leads to a view of the cosmology of consciousness as a chain of events in which
(1) the symmetry-breaking of the forces of nature in our inflationary origin,
leads interactively (2) to biogenesis on planets in the goldilocks zone of
sun-like stars, and (3) over evolutionary time to a genetic solution to the
excitable cell, which then (4) through fractal elaboration becomes tissues and
ultimately the integrated excitations of brain tissue manifesting (5) the
ultimate expression of cosmology in mind-world complementarity, thus enabling
the universe itself over its own evolutionary process (6) to come to terms of
accommodation with its own relativities of space, time and existence during the
brief periods that each of the sexual individuals in this chain of events have
an opportunity to manifest this cosmic paradox within their own subjective
experience, discovering that, in a fundamental sense, subjective consciousness
is a cosmological complement to the objective physical universe.
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