
A New Spin on the Quantum Brain - digital55
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161102-quantum-neuroscience/
======
ttctciyf
The piece[1] from John Preskill linked in the article has less fluff and is
more informative, IMO.

Given Preskill is director of the IQIM, and Fisher is on its faculty, he may
have a promotional agenda; but he has an impressive pedigree[2] - I don't have
the knowledge to directly evaluate the hypothesis myself, but if Preskill
considers it worth investigating, I'd refrain from betting that it's nonsense!

1: [https://quantumfrontiers.com/2015/11/06/wouldnt-you-like-
to-...](https://quantumfrontiers.com/2015/11/06/wouldnt-you-like-to-know-
whats-going-on-in-my-mind/)

2:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Preskill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Preskill)

~~~
taliesinb
Thanks for the link.

I just watched
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku6jVUJONZAm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku6jVUJONZAm)
which is a recent lecture in which Matthew Fisher goes into some detail for a
predominantly physics theorist audience. He doesn't actually finish his whole
talk, but what he does cover is still pretty interesting to me as someone just
trying to follow along with my rudimentary recollections of college quantum
mechanics.

So {ortho,para}-pyrophospate is a big part of his grand hypothesis. This is
analogous to {ortho,para}-water, something I hadn't heard about but which is
apparently pretty famous, except with phosphorous instead of hydrogen. And as
part of discussing this he mentions a study, presumably
[http://www.biophys.ru/archive/h2o-00011.pdf](http://www.biophys.ru/archive/h2o-00011.pdf),
that claims that passing water vapour through charcoal can change the
ortho/para ratio from the normal 3:1 to 12:1 and then down to 2:1 for _hours_.
That's just amazing to me, that liquid water can effectively remember a prior
interaction for hours. Like that Japanese crank scientist's claims about water
memorizing poetry or something, but, you know, actually real.

Fischer's proposed explanation is that ortho-water (and orth-pyrophospate)
can't "sit still" because of the way that the aligned nuclear spins of the
hydrogen (phosphorus) atoms cause the angular momentum to be quantized in a
way that locks the angular velocity to be non-zero. And that discourages the
ortho-molecule from being adsorbed or participating in catalysis -- measurable
things which can clearly have biological effects. And from the nuclear spin,
which is otherwise very long lived!

That's just crazy! Metastable water lasting for hours? I just smiled.

The other stuff may even be a red herring, but even this basic idea is so
exciting if true. Here's a suggestive quote from the Russian article:

> Ortho and para water are expected to have notably different physical-
> chemical properties and, like ortho and para hydrogen, have different
> magnetic properties. The absence of the magnetic moment in para modification
> implies its complete insensitivity to the magnetic field, which could be of
> use in magnetic resonance imaging. The OP separation procedure realized is
> quite straightforward and may occur in nature—in soil, atmosphere, living
> organisms, and cosmic objects. The scope and the role of this phenomenon are
> yet to be studied.

~~~
taliesinb
For posterity, some non-reproductions of the Russian paper:

[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1063776106010092](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1063776106010092)

[http://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.85.012...](http://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.85.012521)

------
russdill
If there were some quantum process involved in our neurons, the next question
would be, when did it evolve? Is it in sponges? We actually have quite
complete simulations of neural networks of some lower lifeforms. It must have
then evolved sometime between the lifeforms we can simulate and ourselves. If
that's the case, you'd expect some discontinuity in functionality vs volume.
You don't see that anywhere.

And as stated in the article, it seems to be a solution in search of a
problem.

~~~
M_Grey
It mostly seems to be another place for dualists to hedge their bets, without
a whole lot to offer anyone else. Maybe that will change, but I doubt that
will be anytime soon.

~~~
russdill
Really a poor place too, since we can simulate quantum behavior, albeit
inefficiently.

------
mathgenius
I'm basically pro quantum-brain (being honest about my bias here) but am
fairly pessimistic about our ability to actually detect such processes in the
brain. It's such an interesting question though, and this is what motivated me
to do a PhD in quantum information theory. Our ability to detect entanglement
is at the moment extremely rudimentary. It appears that detecting entanglement
is about as difficult as creating entanglement, and we suck at this also. Most
of the proposals for quantum computing require vast amounts of entanglement,
and in such a way that any observation of a small sub-part of the system
cannot detect the encoded information. So, we may need a quantum computer to
be able to detect a quantum computer.

~~~
scalio
Well, save some immense breakthrough, _we_ won't detect anything, that's for
sure. That's why it's so important to live, work, educate in a sustainable
fashion ;) . Let's face it, we don't know a whole lot about anything.
Thankfully, many people are taking up the challenge. Sadly, many, many more
just don't get it. Sorry for this rant, it's late.

------
api
I've long suspected that the brain might be using quantum computing
techniques. It's a good physically plausible explanation for how you can get
more compute than a modern at-scale data center on 40-60W of power and in a
volume about the size of two beer cans.

IMHO there's really only three possibilities:

(1) There exist ridiculously efficient learning, search, and other algorithms
that have not been formally discovered that allow the brain to do what it does
on a lot less compute than we think. P=NP would be the extreme case of this.

(2) The brain is a quantum computer or is doing something equally exotic.

(3) It's supernatural, and the brain is only like a radio receiver for
something in another realm. (Or the universe is a simulation, etc., etc.)

~~~
colanderman
Or (4) the brain uses specialized electrochemical processes to perform
computations that are not well addressed by traditional computing paradigms,
which are designed to outperform the brain in areas in which it is naturally
weak.

~~~
api
I think this is a variant of (1). Anything like this should be able to be
computationally approximated efficiently.

~~~
colanderman
Why? That claim seems baseless to me.

My GPU can compute things efficiently that my CPU can't, and vice-versa.
Historically, analog computers have been able to compute things efficiently
that digital computes could not, and vice-versa.

Why should a digital computer be particularly adept at computing that which a
dense electrochemical network can?

------
wizardforhire
Crazy or not, the fact that he brings up testable hypothesis is reason enough
for further study.

------
Udo
The article makes it sound like "quantum decoherence" was the "daunting
obstacle that has plagued microtubules" as a concept. This is a lie. What has
plagued the concept is that there is no evidence for it whatsoever.
Microtubules are a basic structural building block of a wide variety of cells,
and they have not been shown to take part in information processing (apart
from sometimes acting as rails for molecules to travel along), much less have
they ever been demonstrated to have any kind of "quantum" effect. Articles
like the one here are lying to you.

Quantum consciousness is a presuppositional pseudoscience that starts with the
assumption that cognitive processes (or "consciousness" whatever that means)
cannot possibly be of biochemical origin, and then works through different
scenarios based on that until the proponents find one that can't immediately
be discredited for a while. Just because something can't be disproven doesn't
mean it's true though, not by a long shot.

Do quantum effects play a role in chemistry? Yes, where interactions between
molecules and actual quantum phenomena are expected, for example as postulated
for the chlorophyl molecule. But nothing in actual, serious neuroscience has
so far suggested that neurons use "fragile quantum states" to compute
anything.

It's also important to understand what the people proposing the different
flavors of quantum quackery are actually saying: their thesis is that there is
a metaphysical property called "consciousness" inherent to the universe
itself, and that brains act essentially as antennas for this cosmic
phenomenon. Despite the utter baselessness of these claims, people are still
vigorously believing in this ever since Roger Penrose famously lost his mind
to it and Deepak Chopra started selling esoteric books about it.

Quantum quackery is an insidious new age philosophy aimed at exploiting the
willingness of humans to believe they are special and beyond the mundanities
of the rest of the universe.

~~~
DonaldFisk
There's a difference between cognition and consciousness. It's generally
accepted that cognition is caused by electrochemical processes in the brain,
the exact details of which are still to be worked out. However, there's no
generally accepted, or even widely accepted, theory of consciousness.

I think that consciousness might be necessary to make quantum measurements,
though. So did Eugene Wigner. This suggests to me that consciousness might
have something to do with quantum mechanics at a fundamental level. Exactly
what the connexion is, I don't know. I don't think it's helpful to point to
particular quantum processes (possibly) taking place in the brain and claim
they cause consciousness, because that still wouldn't explain how quantum
phenomena give rise to consciousness.

~~~
Udo
That's because consciousness - at least in the way it's being used here - is
not a scientific term at all. What people think it might be isn't reason
enough to postulate a hugely fantastical cosmological mechanism where so far
none has been shown to exist.

I don't really protest against your belief per se, but since you're making
claims about reality that are designed to sound scientific when they really
aren't, I feel compelled to voice disagreement, unpopular as it might be in
this environment.

~~~
DonaldFisk
> That's because consciousness - at least in the way it's being used here - is
> not a scientific term at all.

It's not scientific because it concerns subjective experience, i.e. qualia,
which are not measurable or observable by someone else. All an observer can do
is to observe how the subject reacts. We could either leave consciousness to
philosophers (who haven't got much further than Plato did), or expand science
to include subjective experience.

> What people think it might be isn't reason enough to postulate a hugely
> fantastical cosmological mechanism where so far none has been shown to
> exist.

Agreed.

> I don't really protest against your belief per se, but since you're making
> claims about reality that are designed to sound scientific when they really
> aren't, I feel compelled to voice disagreement, unpopular as it might be in
> this environment.

I'm not advocating any "new age" world view here. My position is similar to
that of David Chalmers, namely that there is something which remains to be
explained. I have no particular views on how.

------
Terr_
> My cynical prediction is that if quantum-effects are part of the brain, it
> will only be in a practical, philosophically-boring way.

> So they may be essential to basic plumbing shared by many species, but not
> otherwise a game-changing factor for "consciousness" or "intelligence"

------
joaorico
This reminded me of talk by David Mermin, about Michael E. Fischer: an
important statistical physicist and the father of Matthew Fischer, as they
mention in the text.

As with almost everything David Mermin writes, I specially enjoyed this talk:
"My Life with Fischer" [0]. In this talk he describes how great, but
scientifically 'unforgiving', Michael Fischer was, and how he raised the
standards and quality of work of those around him. If he has discussed this
successfully at length with his father and if his upbringing instilled in him
some of the qualities Mermin attributes to his father, Matthew Fischer should
be on to something interesting.

Let me share some quotes from that speech:

"Wagner and I had tried to explain to Michael that an argument of Pierre’s
could be adapted to prove that there could be no spontaneous magnetization in
the 2-dimensional Heisenberg model. I hadn’t known Michael for very long at
that point, and one of the first things I learned was that you should think
twice before claiming to _prove_ something in front of a man who encourages
postdocs to show that the free energy _exists_. He didn’t believe a word of
it. Spectral functions, indeed! How did we know those frequency integrals even
converged? It soon became evident that we were dealing with a man who knew
nothing about quantum field theory, didn’t care one bit that he didn’t, and
was convinced that we would be better off ourselves to forget it. Immediately.

So in the face of this astonishing attack, we worked backwards, unbundling the
result from the conceptual wrappings in which it was enshrouded by some of the
great thinkers of the previous decade, peeling off layer after layer, day
after day, in the face of unrelenting skepticism, until finally we had it down
to a trivial statement about finite dimensional matrices.

And then an astonishing change took place. “Publish!” he practically shouted,
“it’s very important!” and having learned what it was like to be at the end of
a Michael Fisher attack, I suddenly learned what it was like to have him on
your side. Freeman Dyson came to town. Michael introduced us. “Mermin and
Wagner have proved that there’s no spontaneous magnetization in the
2-dimensional Heisenberg model,” Michael proudly informed him, as Herbert and
I basked in his admiration. “Of course there isn’t.” Dyson responded. “But
they have _proved_ that there isn’t” Michael insisted. One Dyson eyebrow may
have moved up half a millimeter in response. No matter. I was hooked on
arguing with Michael Fisher. My life would never be the same."

On Mermin and Ashcroft's textbook (one of the best in the field):

"One person, however, has influenced almost every chapter. Michael E. Fisher,
Horace White Professor of Chemistrry, Physics, _and_ Mathematics, friend and
neighbor, gadfly and troubadour, began to read the manuscript six years ago
and has followed ever since, hard upon our tracks, through chapter, and, on
occasion, through revision and re-revision, pouncing on obscurities,
condemning dishonesties, decrying omissions, labeling axes, correcting
misspellings, redrawing figures, and often making our lives very much more
difficult by his unrelenting insistence that we could be more literate,
accurate, intelligible, and thorough. We hope he will be pleased at how many
of his illegible red marginalia have found their way into our text, and expect
to be hearing from him about those that have not."

"What does Michael Fisher do when he checks into a hotel room for a night? He
rearranges the furniture. He’ll rotate the bed 90 degrees, put the TV in the
closet to make more room on the desk, carry the desk over to the window to get
more light. He is an inspiration to me. Often I find it valuable to ask myself
at difficult moments, what would Michael do? This strategy is not to be
confused with that of the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement, though a comparison
can be interesting. Often the two questions can lead to quite different
answers.

Let me give you a recent example of the benefits of asking “What would Michael
do?” A few years ago I was at the annual meeting of the Danish Physical
Society which took place at a small conference center south of Copenhagen.
Each conferee had a little apartment with a tiny attic. Downstairs was a
living room and bathroom. Up a narrow ladder was a built in bed in a room with
no light. Since one used the apartment only at night this was an irritating
arrangement. I don’t know how Jesus would have coped, but it was pretty clear
to me what Michael would have done. So I dragged the mattress and bedding down
the ladder, remade the bed on the living room floor, and never climbed up to
the attic again. This solution would not have occurred to me if I had not
asked myself ”What would Michael do?”

The next day various Danish conferees complained about the arrangement. Ah, I
said, under such trying circumstances you should always ask yourself what
Michael Fisher would do. That night the air was filled with matresses hurtling
down ladders. I believe there is now a flourishing ”What Would Michael Do?”
movement among the Danish physicists."

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0211382](https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-
mat/0211382)

