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From: pnorton@beaux.atwc.teradyne.com (Peter Norton)
Subject: Re: Roger Penrose's New Book (in HTML) 1.0
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References: <JMC.94Oct23231211@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> <39ucks$7lp@yoda.Syntex.Com> <39uner$l3p@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 00:01:04 GMT
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sarfatti@ix.netcom.com (Jack Sarfatti) writes:
>In answer to someone's question about the universal mechanism of 
>anesthetics. Hameroff writes me:
>>
>>Jack
>>Regarding mechanism of anesthetics (volatile gas type, i.e. ether, 
>>halothane, isoflurane, nitrous oxide ...) which, at precisely the right 
>>concentration,erase consciousness but spare other brain functions such 
>>as control of breathing, evoked potentials etc:
>>
>>These molecules (mostly halogenated hydrocarbons) bind by very weak van 
>>der Waals forces in hydrophobic pockets of a class of neural proteins 
>>(membrane channels, receptors, second messengers, enzymes, tubulin...) 
>>and prevent these proteins from undergoing conformational dynamical 
>>changes in response to appropriate stimuli. Thus a channel won't open, 
[...]
>>
>>Although Roger Penrose and I are saying microtubules are the key 
>>quantum devicesfor consciousness, membrane proteins and others would 
>>also be recruited into a coherent state. Anesthetics may act on 

In a lecture I saw at UCSF, Hameroff showed a graph of 'quantum coherence'
versus time, as representing the discrete nature of sequential thoughts.
Coherence increases on a time scale of 500 ms and then collapses via
'objective reduction' (some kind of nonlinear quantum gravity Penrosian
mechanism, apparently) whereupon the experimental subject has a conscious
thought.  Looked like a sawtooth pulse train signal (before the introduction
of hallucinogenics anyway).

My question is:  what is 'quantum coherence'?   How is it quantifiable?  
If it is quantifiable, is it actually (practically) measurable?
Is 'quantum coherence' a standard concept, or is it a neologism?

>So there! I'm just a simple-minded physicist and I don't pretend to have 
>a deep understanding of the above obviously important information - as 
>yet. I encourage students to get into this field.

Thanks for an informative post.

I encourage students to get into and then to leap over this field into 
its logical conclusion!

Cheers


