Quantum Entanglement

[ysabetwordsmith]

... may include human brains.


Consider aspects of quantum physics, then compare that to how brains and minds work. One example is that quantum physics allows for nonlinear time. While most people's everyday experiences are timebound, some other things really are not. Love exists beyond space and time; you don't stop loving people just because they are far away or no longer living. PTSD and other "stuck" problems are functions of nonlinear time. There's a very precise, if unfortunately victim-blaming, description of this in Deep Space 9 with the wormhole aliens insisting that "Time is not linear" and "You exist here" regarding Sisko's memories of his wife's death. So, quantum entanglement in the brain is not just plausible, it may offer useful insights and problem-solving tools.


But there are other tasks our brains perform routinely that computers simply cannot match — interpreting events and situations and using imagination, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

This is why those are areas to watch closely in artificial intelligence.


If quantum processes are at work in the brain, it would be difficult to observe how they work and what they do. Indeed, not knowing exactly what we are looking for makes quantum processes very difficult to find. “If the brain uses quantum computation, then those quantum operators may be different from operators known from atomic systems,” Christian Kerskens, a neuroscience researcher at Trinity and one of the authors of the paper, told Big Think.

Yeah, but if we could figure out how those work in the brain, then that might help people design a quantum computer.


As the heart beats, it generates a signal called the heartbeat potential, or HEP. With each peak of the HEP, the researchers saw a corresponding spike in the NMR signal, which corresponds to the interactions among proton spins. This signal could be a result of entanglement, and witnessing it might indicate there was indeed a non-classical intermediary.

Fascinating.


Seeing entanglement in the brain may show that the brain is not classical, as previously thought, but rather a powerful quantum system. If the results can be confirmed, they could provide some indication that the brain uses quantum processes. This could begin to shed light on how our brain performs the powerful computations it does, and how it manages consciousness.

This has a lot of potential. I'm wondering, for example, if mental injuries and illnesses could show up in quantum entanglements. If so, then one reason for the lack of hard evidence in mental health would be that people were simply looking for it in the wrong place. Just having solid diagnostics would mean a big leap forward regarding conditions that a lot of people don't really believe in.

We could also explore how brains do some of the far-out superpower stuff, like consciously changing bodily responses so that, for instance, a monk can dry a wet sheet with body heat instead of dying from hypothermia like an ordinary person.

We could even tackle one of the oldest questions spanning philosophy, religion, and biology which is: How does an immaterial thing (the soul or mind) attach so pervasively to a material thing (the body)? Quantum entanglement would be a logical place to look for that attachment, since the soul/mind is made of energy, and "material" is actually just a bunch of whizzing little bits of energy holding hands and pretending really hard to be solid. Quantum physics is where the apparent material world breaks down and totally different things are going on.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Not surprising really... the fundamental unit of memory is the cytosine microtubule, that has a column of electrons up the middle of it, that although classically isolated, exhibit quantum entanglement as they change spin state synchronously.

That said, this shows that quantum function extends beyond that base level. (as it has to logically, for the brain to function the way it does.)

Although... i'm not sure if I'd describe the soul as being energy ... as it's more a pattern of bias in the quantum field that underlies reality. Kind of like gravity is the way space/time bends without being a discrete 'thing', as it's more a matter of geometry.

[navelgazed]

If this is true, I wonder if there would be anything that would naturally lead to 'multiple consciousnesses' in the way we personally view our plurality.