Elusive Consciousness

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari, Surendrasingh Pokharana, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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"tubulin,re intracellular structures and other cyto
details are already given earlier. Penrose-Hameroff have further developed a theory known as "Orchestrated objective reduction" ("Orch OR"). They put forwards a hypothesis that consciousness depends on quantum computations in structures called microtubules inside brain neurons. Microtubules are cylindrical polymers of the protein "tubulin," and major components of the cell cytoskeleton which selfassembles to configure intracellular architecture, create and regulate synapses, and communicate between membrane structures and genes in the cell nucleus. In addition to bone-like support, microtubules and other cytoskeletal components seem to act as the cell's nervous system, its "on-board computer," continually reshaping and differentiating. Actually these microtubules consist of millions of smaller structures called tubulins, which behave like quantum mechanical systems and they are the candidates for quantum equivalent of "0" and "1" binary digits used in ordinary computers. These are called qubits.
Penrose and Hameroff Orch OR proposes tubulins can be quantum bits, or "qubits" in microtubule quantum computers, and that such quantum computations connect conscious brain functions to the most basic level of the universe. This opens the door to consciousness being nonlocal, and in some cases possibly not exactly connected to the body and the brain. These speculations, are based on ideas in physics put forth by Penrose. Who defined OR as self-collapse of quantum superpositions due to separations in space-time geometry of group of quantum states (generated from tubulins, in this case). Here the crucial parameter is E, the gravitational self-energy of an object E = (h/2)/t, separated from itself. Here h, is Planck's constant and t is the time at which OR occurs. E may be calculated based on factors including (1) the object's mass, (2) the level at which the object separates from itself, i.e., shifts of its entire mass, individual atoms, atomic nuclei, or subatomic particles, and (3) the spatial separation distance, how far the object, or its space-time geometry separates from itself. If a superposition of self-energy E evolves and avoids decoherence to reach time t, an OR moment of consciousness occurs.
Because of the inverse relation, the larger the mass and spatial separation E, the briefer the time t at which OR conscious moments occur. Superposition E must avoid decoherence (i.e., the quantum system must be isolated from the classical environment) until time is reached. Penrose and Hameroff suggest such conditions have evolved in the brain, specifically in microtubules inside brain neurons, and that microtubules perform quantum computations which are "orchestrated" by synaptic inputs and neurophysiology, isolated from decoherence, and terminated by Penrose OR, hence orchestrated objective reduction, that is "Orch OR." This Orch OR is being termed as consciousness. It means that this