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Article 2144 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Eccles on neural quantum effects
Message-ID: <60327@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 91 22:46:10 GMT
References: <12689@pitt.UUCP> <40650@dime.cs.umass.edu> <12708@pitt.UUCP> <44970@mimsy.umd.edu>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
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In-reply-to: harwood@umiacs.umd.edu (David Harwood)

In article <44970@mimsy.umd.edu>, harwood@umiacs (David Harwood) writes:
>	It has also been very recently discovered that sub-vocal internal
>"speech" in fact involves motor neurons which are active in ordinary speech
>production, but somehow their "output" (to the mouth and vocal cords) is
>suppressed.

Sir John Eccles makes a similar point in his MINDWAVES article.  He
refers to experiments that measure blood flow for mental movement and
for actual movement.  The latter involved a greater region of activity.

Eccles reads this, and some other experiments, as support for his
dualist-interactionist view.  He cites with approval the quantum
view of mind in Henry Margenau THE MIRACLE OF EXISTENCE.

He also reiterates an earlier neural quantum connection that he made in
his FACING REALITY, this time with experimental evidence.  Specifically,
the synaptic unit of action is a vesicle of transmitter, of diamater
40nm and mass 30ag.  The uncertainty principle lets him pin down its
position to about 3nm if the time spread is 1 ms, which are the correct
order of magnitude for action across the presynaptic membrane.

Eccles then refers to a study [JJB Jack, SJ Redman, K Wong JOURNAL OF
PHYSIOLOGY 321 pp65-96 (1981)] involving the emission of a single such
vescicle from a muscle afferent fibre to its motoneuron.  They found
that one vesicle emission was best described probabilistically.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


