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torsdag 17 februari 2011

The body-mind problem - FQXI-contest 2011.

Dear Ulla Marianne Mattfolk,

Congratulations...your submission to the FQXi Essay Contest has been approved! Your essay is now available for download and discussion on this FQXi forum page.

My FQXI-essay here.

Thanks again for your essay submission, and we look forward to a vibrant discussion of your essay in the FQXi forum!

- The Foundational Questions Institute


This wasn't so easy, because of the small size, 9p only. I would need much more....
The topic is so wast. But after many late nights this is what I achieved. Some said it is impossible for a non-physicist to write a physical essay, but they don't know me:) Few is so stubborn as me. Of course I can write :)

Well, the result is free to judge.


The body-mind problem as a play between coherence and decoherence.
Abstract:
Living matter results from mixed states of quantum and classical physics; the mind and the body. The life as a function from this depends on a digital state function, and the Schrödinger cat is ‘dead and alive’ at the same time. There is no total wave collapse, only partial with interference/superposition. In contrast to non-living systems, they don’t appear to optimize anything, but is intermediate, and reactive.

Life uses noise or dissipation as a tool to create stability and coherence, through formation of decoherence and negentropic states. But life is indeed quantal entanglement, resonance and superposition, with also noise as perceptions from the surroundings, to keep up the quantal states. To be a living matter made of ordinary atoms and molecules the decoherence is needed, and thence we have two different selves, one that we might call the decoherent singular I, and one that we usually call 'the wise man', or 'the magnetic body' in TGD; that is one classic and one quantal self. The longstanding problems of stress, homeostasis and sleep would also get a reasonable understanding.

Perceptions are also both classic, through bodily sensations and senses mostly, including thinking, and quantal in form of cognition, awareness, intention, qualia, and also OBE and paranormal events belonging to experiencies of our quantal self, the magnetic body. Paranormal events would then partly be explained in a simple way.

Download Essay PDF File

Write, and discuss, pls.

måndag 20 september 2010

Quantum biology - coherence I.

How can we overcome the decoherence problem when matter meets surroundings? This is the question that has stopped high temp. superconduction. Now it may be solved. Universal Dynamical Decoupling of a Single Solid-State Spin from a Spin Bath, by G. de Lange in Science today, may have an answer to the problem, reported by ScienceDaily.

By applying a specially designed sequence of high-precision electromagnetic pulses, the scientists were able to protect the arbitrary quantum state of a single spin, and they made the spin evolve as if it was completely decoupled from the outside world. In this way, scientists achieved a 25-fold increase in the lifetime of the quantum spin state at room temperature. This is the first demonstration of a universal dynamical decoupling realized on a single solid state quantum spin.


The researchers developed and implemented a special kind of quantum control over a single quantum magnetic moment (spin) of an atomic-sized impurity in diamond. These impurities, called nitrogen-vacancy (or N-V) centers, have attracted much attention due to their unusual magnetic and optical properties.

DOE/Ames Laboratory "Implementing dynamical decoupling on a single quantum spin in solid state at room temperature has been an appealing but distant goal for quite a while," said Viatcheslav Dobrovitski.

"Uncontrolled interactions of the spins with the environment have been the major hurdle for implementing quantum technologies. Our results demonstrate that this hurdle can be overcome by advanced control of the spin itself," said Ronald Hanson from Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft.

Besides its importance to fundamental understanding of quantum mechanics, the team's achievement opens a way to using the impurity centers in diamond as highly sensitive nanoscale magnetic sensors, and potentially, as qubits for larger-scale quantum information processing.

Earlier have optical techniques been used. An electron spin localized in a quantum dot is the quantum bit. The spin replaces a classical digital bit, which can take on two values, usually labeled 0 and 1. The electron spin can also take on two values. However, since it is a quantum object, it can also take all values in between. Obviously, such a quantum unit can hold much more information than a classical one. That is why, scientists around the world are trying to find an efficient way to control and manipulate the electron spin in a quantum dot in order to enable new quantum devises using magnetic and electric fields. The electron spin precession frequencies in an external magnetic field are different from each other due to small variations of the quantum dot shape and size. In addition, the electron spin precession frequency has a contribution of a random hyperfine field of the nuclear spins in the quantum dot volume. This makes a coherent control and manipulation of electron spins in an ensemble of quantum dots 'impossible'.

In a Science publication (Science, vol. 313, 341 (2006)),was demonstrated a method, whereby a tailored periodic illumination with a pulsed laser can drive a large fraction of electron spins (up to 30%) in an ensemble of quantum dots into a synchronized motion. almost the whole ensemble of electron spins (90%) precesses coherently under periodic resonant excitation. It turns out that the nuclear contribution to the electron spin precession acts constructively by focusing the electron spin precession in different quantum dots to a few precession modes controlled by the laser excitation protocol, instead of acting as a random perturbation of electron spins, as it was thought previously.

In optical entanglement experiments, a pair of entangled photons may be separated via a beam splitter. Despite their physical separation, the entangled photons continue to act as a single quantum object. They uses electrons in a superconductor in place of photons in an optical system. The electrons they conduct entangle to form what are known as Cooper pairs. In the new experiment, Cooper pairs flow through a superconducting bridge until they reach a carbon nanotube that acts as the electronic equivalent of a beam splitter. Occasionally, the electrons part ways and are directed to separate quantum dots - but remain entangled.

Quantum networks use entangled qubits. Solid-state quantum bits, or "qubits," can communicate with one another over long distances. This would require the nodes that process and store quantum data in qubits to be connected to one another by entanglement, also at long distance.

"Demonstration of quantum entanglement between a solid-state material and photons is an important advance toward linking qubits together into a quantum network."

One can engineer and control the interaction between individual photons and matter in a solid-state material, and the photons can be imprinted with the information stored in a qubit. Builds upon earlier work by Lukin's group to use single atom impurities in diamonds as qubits. Lukin and colleagues have previously shown that these impurities can be controlled by focusing laser light on a diamond lattice flaw where nitrogen replaces an atom of carbon. That previous work showed that the so-called spin degrees of freedom of these impurities make excellent quantum memory.

Lukin and his co-authors now say that these impurities are also remarkable because, when excited with a sequence of finely tuned microwave and laser pulses, they can emit photons one at a time, such that photons are entangled with quantum memory. Such a stream of single photons can be used for secure transmission of information.

"Since photons are the fastest carriers of quantum information, and spin memory can robustly store quantum information for relatively long periods of time, entangled spin-photon pairs are ideal for the realization of quantum networks," Lukin says. "Such a network, a quantum analog to the conventional internet, could allow for absolutely secure communication over long distances."

Rådmark, oct -09, and his team proved experimentally that their six photon qubits are robust and should be able to reliably carry information over long distances.


A new method for combining six photons together results in a highly robust qubit capable of transporting quantum information over long distances.


Driving a qubit along a longer quantum path (routes 2 and 3) dramatically improves the signal quality over that achieved by following the shorter path (route 1). The research applies to information stored in qubits that consisted of Nitrogen-based defects in diamond, as schematically shown on the right.

In most arrangements that rely on Nitrogen atoms in diamond to store data, reading the information also resets the qubit, which means there is only one opportunity to measure the state of the qubit. By developing a technique that involves the spin of the Nitrogen nucleus in the process as well, a team of physicists at the University of Stuttgart in Germany has turned the single step read-out into a multi-step process.

Rather than simply resetting the electron-based qubit when the information is read, the researchers discovered that they can force the state of the Nitrogen nucleus to change state twice before the information in the qubit is finally erased.

A quantum network – in which memory devices that store quantum states are interconnected with quantum information processing devices – is a prototype for designing a quantum internet. The atomic-ensemble memory can receive an arbitrary polarization state of an incoming photon, called a polarization qubit, announce successful storage of the qubit, and later regenerate another photon with the same polarization state.

So now maybe quantum biology also has come a step closer? Synergy and coherence are cornerstones. Earlier we saw that DNA can be made to act as 'transistors' for this world web of information. Is that the essence of the quantum antenna?

fredag 7 maj 2010

Emergent Mind?

There are so many models of consciousness. A way to get the essence of it is to scale down the question to its essentials to see what it is about. Popp is very good at that.

He uses the same picture as Rakovic and Pitkänen, and based on thinkings of Henry Stapp. Also Wilhelm Tiller is on the same line with his simulator hypothesis.

Zurek 2002:
Quantum mechanics works exceedingly well in all practical applications. No example of conflict between its predictions and experiment is known.

Without quantum physics, we could not explain the behavior of the solids, the structure and function of DNA, the color of the stars, the action of lasers, or the properties of superfluids. Yet nearly a century after its inception, the debate about the relation of quantum physics to the familiar physical world continues. Why is a theory that seems to account with precision for everything we can measure still deemed lacking?
The only “failure” of quantum theory is its inability to provide a natural framework for our prejudices about the workings of the Universe. States of quantum systems evolve according to the deterministic, linear Schrödinger equation and there is no indication of a border between quantum and classical - The measurement tools (numbers?) are classic usually - so the results are classic? Our perceptions are often difficult to reconcile with the predictions of quantum mechanics, with many alternatives.

And he adds: While the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our elusive “consciousness,” there is every indication that the choice occurs much before consciousness ever gets involved and that, once made, the choice is irrevocable.
Zurek has the opposite sight on the problem. Quantal states origin in classical, and the consciousness arise before the quantum state origin. But it is a very difficult statement to do.

Bohr emphasized that the border between quantum and classical world must be mobile so that even the "ultimate apparatus"— the human nervous system — could in principle be measured and analyzed as a quantum object. But he also said that the measurements was classic.

Example of a macroscopic superposition state from Hamerhoff. Schematic of quantum computation of three tubulins which begin (left) in initial classical states, then enter isolated quantum superposition in which all possible states coexist. After reduction, one particular classical outcome state is chosen (right).

Stapp says: ...according to the new conception, the physically described world is built not out of bits of matter, as matter was understood in the nineteenth century, but out of objective tendencies – potentialities and the potential degrees of freedom. That is both psychology and physical at the same time = knowledge and an action that change the potentailities.

and 2010 recently in 'Quantum Mechanical Approach to the Relationship Between Mind and Brain', -
According to those (reductionistic) principles, the mind-brain connection is fundamentally bottom-up: mental events are imagined to be determined by physical activities in the brain, and to have no capacity to influence brain activities in ways not traceable to prior physical activities. The possibility of genuine top-down causation originating in the mental realm is excluded. Puzzlements arising from this bottom-up approach are well known. Why do the mental aspects exist at all if every physical event is causally traceable to prior physical events?

Yes, why do we have a mental side? What is it good for?

...it is worth noting that the essential change wrought in science early in the twentieth century by the switch from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics is not the introduction of probabilities. It is the introduction of mental aspects of reality into the basic causal structure of our fundamental physical theory... a concomitant reversal of ideas. Newton must be replaced by von Neumann.

That is of course true. The change is mental mostly, as an awareness of the possibilities.That awareness can then be realized, but only if we first see the possibilities. So the observer and the consciousness are very important. Then the decoherence problem face us. Is consciousness required for the wave collapse? Is the moon there when we don't look? How are far away galaxies born, when we didn't were there to look? Who's consciousness was then acting? Some Universal consciousness?

Common sense say this is rubbish. Of course Moon is there, The anthropic principle is Medevial thinking, and the cat is either dead or alive, without our participation.

But then are other results telling exactly the opposite to common sense. PSI-research, Tiller's results, quantum computating results etc. Something 'spooky' is there? Our world relies on quantum mechanics. We are just blind, not to see it.


In 'Rhytms of the brain', of Buzsáki 2006, he points out:
The basic circuitry is the hierarchy of multiple parallell loops. Sensory information is not required for movement, but sensors are developed to guide movements in an effective way. During evolution the basic circuit isn't fundamentally modified, but instead multiple parallell circuits consisting of intermediate and longer chains of neurons, are superimposed on the exisisting wiring. No matter what fraction of the brain, neuronal loops are the principal organization at nearly every level. A physist would call this multilevel, self-similar organization a fractal of loops. Moreover links between lower and higher levels are formed, generating a hierarchial form of organization. The problem is in expanding this construction. New brains are modified versions of older brains; the most recently developed structure is laid on the top of the hierarchy level. The new hierarchy can suppress, reroute or amplify the circuits. The main difference between 'simple and complex brains' are the number of loops that link outputs (actions) with inputs (sensations). The loops are not closed by brain wiring, but there is a 'gap' between the neuronal connections controlling the outputs and inputs that transmit information. The 'gap' may be closed by 'calibrating' actions of the circuits to the metric of the physical world, and allows the brain to learn to sense. The actions are teaching the sensors. The ultimate outcome is that from past experience the brain can calculate the potential outcomes and convey this prediction to the effectors (as muscles).
So our nervous system is a number of superimposed network hierarchies. Evolution is to lay a new layer upon the old ones. Mathemathically this is exponentiality. The quantal world is exponential.

The number of variable ways (potentials) grows exponentially with complexity? This is a kind of 'superposition'. The biological aim is to do as efficient calculations as possible of the potentialities, kind of risk management. This is parallell computing, especially well developed in the right hemisphere. The important thing is not the known facts, but the predictions. The emotions are very fast and represented at every hierarchial level by links and modulations. These emotions are constructed also into the body as reactionpatterns in a predictive behavior (memory). The most effective way is to react on the thoughts and emotions directly. This is the mental state.

In that 'gap' the extracellular matrix is very important.

The border between quantum and classic.
In the absence of a crisp criterion to distinguish between quantum and classical, an identification of the classical with the macroscopic has often been tentatively accepted. The inadequacy of this approach has become apparent as a result of relatively recent developments, says Zurek 2002, and he gives many ex., as; Quantum states associated with the currents of superconducting Josephson junctions involve macroscopic numbers of electrons, but still they can tunnel between the minima of the effective potential corresponding to the opposite sense of rotation. The nerve pulse use a Josephson current and is superconductive in that sense. Biological systems becomes quantal using synchronization, polarization, oscillation? - If macroscopic systems cannot be always safely placed on the classical side of the boundary, then might there be no boundary at all, asks Zurek?

Stapp: The physical descriptions specify ‘potentialities’ for psychophysical events to occur. These events are the only actual things represented in the conceptual structure. Each such event is supposed to have both a psychologically described aspect, and a physically described aspect. The latter is expressed as a ‘reduction’ of the prior set of potentialities in "Quantum Interactive Dualism"

Popp: Reality and consciousness are different things. What is the quantity of consciousness? There are also the 'consciousness about consciousness' problem (qualia). Consciousness is not a strange property of matter, and it is not quantal only. Quantum theory is a product of our consciousness instead. The boundaries are 'virtual' particles, a 'real' quantum vacuum state. These particles cannot be identical to the real ones, because then nothing would happen. This 'exchange' is also time-dependent and dependent of the Planck's constant energetically, and coupled to a 'real' event. The chemistry serves as example, seen in different strengths on binding forces responsible for stable configurations. Exchange forces are 'virtual' forces of the vacuum field, resulting in van der Waals forces, Casimir forces, London forces etc.

A virtual, antagonistic world, or a world of our imagination? But what is imagination? I would say as - if loops, or some kind of prediction about the future (memory of the future?).
Popp: The essential point is the dialogue between the "actual" world and the "virtual" world, this is a permanent and active transformation from the "world of events" into the "world of imagination", from actual into potential information, and vice versa. Up to a point (where it has possibly to get corrected) I suggest to define consciousness then as an active process where actual and potential information are mutually transformed into each other. Consciousness is required to register the measure so it get a meaning. A gap between actual and potential information is a measure of consciousness.

Higher stability depends on the spin. The 'tightness' of the package will change. The density will oscillate. Also the weight will change a little. The exclusion principle, depending on repellation of the same kinds of spin, is the border, that holds the atom configurations fixed.

Zurek: Superpositions evolve forever according to the Schrödinger equation. Each time a suitable interaction takes place between any two quantum systems, the wave function of the universe splits, developing ever more “branches.” There is nothing more macroscopic than the Universe. It can have no a priori classical subsystems. There can be no observer “on the outside.” In this universal setting, classicality must be an emergent property of the selected observables or systems. But which is these 'observables'? In the 2003 text he says; the ability of quantum environment to rapidly decohere systems to which they are coupled. So it is the quantum world that do the decoherence?

The Copenhagen Interpretation demands an a priori “classical domain” with a border that enforces a classical “embargo” by letting through just one potential outcome. The 'Many Worlds' aims to abolish the need for the border altogether, pushing it to the boundary between the physical Universe and consciousness.
“Why do I, the observer, perceive only one of the outcomes?” The key fact has been known almost since the inception of quantum theory, but its significance for the transition from quantum to classical is being recognized only now: Macroscopic systems are never isolated from their environments. Macroscopic systems are open, quantal are closed. There is also the link to the enthropy. The natural loss of quantum coherence, which “leaks out” into the environment, resulting in “decoherence” even in quantal reduced waves/states. Decoherence imposes, in effect, the required “embargo” on the potential outcomes by allowing the observer to maintain records of alternatives but to be aware of only one of the branches—one of the “decoherent histories”.

So it is the awareness that is selective. No wave collapse at all. Many 'histories' are recorded but they are 'implicit', not allowed to talk. This is the same as Freud said. The energy content is the factor making the choise? Perception studies have conformed this picture that we percieve much more than we are aware of.

Reduction of the initial pure state vector decreases the information available to the observer about the resulting reduced, mixed, complex system. The information loss is needed if the outcomes are to become classical and thereby available as initial conditions to predict the future. The effect of this loss is to increase the entropy. Information gain—the objective of the measurement—is accomplished only when the observer interacts and becomes correlated with the detector in the already precollapsed state. In particular, the entanglement between the system and the detector is obviously quantum, because classical systems cannot be entangled. For macroscopic objects, the decoherence time is typically much less than the relaxation time.

Zurek 2002: p 20. Classical reality can be defined purely in terms of classical states obeying classical laws.
In the past few sections, we have seen how this reality emerges from the substrate of quantum physics: Open quantum systems are forced into states described by localized wave packets. They obey classical equations of motion, although with damping terms and fluctuations that have a quantum origin. What else is there to explain?
Controversies regarding the interpretation of quantum physics originate in the clash between the predictions of the Schrödinger equation and our perceptions. I will therefore conclude this paper by revisiting the source of the problem—our awareness of definite outcomes. If these mental processes were essentially unphysical, there would be no hope of formulating and addressing the ultimate question—why do we perceive just one of the quantum alternatives?—within the context of physics. Indeed, one might be tempted to follow Eugene Wigner (1961) and give consciousness the last word in collapsing the state vector. I shall assume the opposite. That is, I shall examine the idea that the higher mental processes all correspond to well-defined, but at present, poorly understood information-processing functions that are being carried out by physical systems, our brains.

In particular, the process of decoherence we have described above is bound to affect the states of the brain: Relevant observables of individual neurons, including chemical concentrations and electrical potentials, are macroscopic. They obey classical, dissipative equations of motion. Thus, any quantum superposition of the states of neurons will be destroyed far too quickly for us to become conscious of the quantum “goings on.” Decoherence, or more to the point, environment-induced superselection, applies to our own 'state of mind'.

There is, however, another reason for this focus on the classical that must have played a decisive role: Our senses did not evolve for the purpose of verifying quantum mechanics. Rather, they have developed in the process in which survival of the fittest played a central role. There is no evolutionary reason for perception when nothing can be gained from prediction. And, as the predictability sieve illustrates, only quantum states that are robust in spite of decoherence, and hence, effectively classical, have predictable consequences. Indeed, classical reality can be regarded as nearly synonymous with predictability.

Decoherence destroys superpositions. The environment induces, in effect, a superselection rule that prevents certain superpositions from being observed. Only states that survive this process can become classical.


I must emphazise that Zurek talks of open quantum systems.


Creativity and relaxation.
Consciousness is associated with the capacity of becoming aware of something. To get some 'degree of awareness', but the difficulty is in the roles and interferences of the outer world and the observer. Consciousness cannot be objectified, the role of the observer can't be removed. Stapp identified the consciousness as the collapse of the wave function, or the condensation of external events onto the observers detector system (sensors) into reality. This is the decoherence. Pitkänen say it is the jump between histories (of whom = the observer), Rakovic say we ought to eliminate the quantal 'memory attractors' (of whom = the observer) to get the decoherenced, healthy stage.

In this process it is the potential information that is important. This can be measured in Shannon's approach, and the probabilities are measured in an open system.

Consciousness gives evolutionary significans, because the knowledge of the potentials gives better predictions of the 'virtual' world (as - if loops), that is, the most important survival information is in the probability field. Intuition and the sixth sense are very important. PSI research has also shown that most of us can use this sense. We experience via the senses, but according to consciousness we can also change the conditions in our outer world by consciousness. Tiller has done good science on this. He writes:
We have discovered that there are actually two levels of physical reality and not just one. It is this “new” level of physical reality that can be significantly influenced by human intention! How? There are two basic kinds of unique substances found in these two levels of physical reality. They appear to interpenetrate each other but, normally, they do not interact with each other. We call this the uncoupled state of physical reality. In the uncoupled state we are able detect our normal physical environment with our five physical senses. But the substance in this normal state of physical reality is not influenced by human intention. The substance in the “new” level of physical reality, appears to function in the empty space between the fundamental electric particles that make up our normal electric atoms and molecules. As such, it is currently invisible to us and to our traditional measurement instruments. But the substance in this “new” level is influenced by human intention.
Why would this be so important? Because it gives creativity, and it invokes on health. Not too much creativity, but in suitable amounts. Creativity gives a survival benefit. Brain can in fact be seen as a sense organ too (for creativity?). It doesn't only recieve sensory inputs, it will also make them to some extent.

It also gives an evolutionary advantage to draw out the highest amount of 'possibilities' from real events (calculation?), and to store them. This is a maximation of possibilities, or negentropy, as Pitkänen puts it? Popp talks of optimizing the negentropy.
Or it might be better to discover highest amounts of realizations in a few possibilities (resolution). We must also remember that negative information is important, a lack of (good) information. Also the consciousness storage gives a relaxation, and a life-time of coherent time, because stored electromagnetic waves do not loose their phase information during this time. And if the stored potential information is exponential the fields become coherent (superfluidy) and give relations of the wave (every point is connected to every other point= holism) by phase correlation. A maximation of relaxation gives a better flexibility, a wider action potential for work. A coherent field can keep the initial state permanently in mind too. In fact, this is a requirement for the developement of consciousness. It optimizes the capacity for differentation, communication, a realization of space and time, and health.

Humor and laghter are excellent relaxtants, and very healthy too.

Popp writes: In order to develop 'consciousness' Nature seems to use the possibility of a strict maximization of the entropy as a time average, in order to arrive at highest stability and of coupling the informational carriers (coherent photons of different modes) to one degree of freedom, in order to arrive at highest sensitivity and holistic information of the body. There are some models based on exciplex (excited complex) systems of DNA.
Li & Popp:
...exciplex systems of biological systems to be the molecular base of life altogether. Exciplexes (excited complexes) are metastable states of always two similar molecules physically bound in such a way that the (ideal) groundstate is formed by the separated molecules and the (ideal) excited state corresponds to the strongly bound molecule, forming, for instance, a dimer. Between these states there are the many possible steps of excited complexes of both partners. They are linked by a manifold of different binding forces, e.g. H-bridging, van-der-Waals binding forces, partially also charge transfer, ionic or exchange forces. Exciplexes are formed by all base pairs of the DNA, in a perpendicular as well as in a parallel direction to the DNA strand axis. The fundamental biological importance of the exciplex formation concerns their extraordinary capacity in establishing powerful photon traps. According to our proposals the network of photon traps in the biological system is at the same time the basic source of the communication system of the living system. By mutual absorption and emission (annihilation and creation) of photons within this network, intracellular as well as intercellular communication takes place where the "sucking potentials" of the traps and the available light intensities are the decisive regulatory quantities of the three-dimensional channel system of the cells communication base. We now have some evidence of the existence and of some rather interesting properties of this system. Therefore we use this occasion to explain the most decisive properties of exciplex states in terms of their photon sucking potential.

The exciplex states form photon traps (E<0).This mechanism provides the very basis of life since it opens an infinite play of competition for light with infinite possibilities of modulations in all frequency ranges lower than ionizing UV. This mechanism is universal in all living systems.


Amico et al. shows the properties of the entanglement in many-body systems, and how entanglement is tightly connected to the characteristics of the phase diagram. The entanglement can have different hierarchies too, as bipartite, tripartite etc. (compare with the qubit/quantum dot research with different energy levels proceeding at the same time, entanglement - the spooky, distance-defying link that can form between objects such as atoms even when they are completely shielded.) The success of quantum computation and communication relied on the longevity of entanglement in multi-particle quantum states. The presence of decoherence in communication channels and computing devices, degrades the entanglement when the particles propagate or the computation evolves. Decoherence leads to both local dynamics, associated with single-particle dissipation, diffusion, and decay, and to global dynamics, which may provoke the eventual disappearance of entanglement, known as “entanglement sudden death”.

One important cause of decoherence is the interaction of a quantum system with its environment, which ’entangles’ the two and distributes the quantum coherence over so many degrees of freedom as to render it unobservable. Large molecules are particularly suitable for the investigation of the quantumclassical transition because they can store much energy in numerous internal degrees of freedom; the internal energy can be converted into thermal radiation and thus induce decoherence.

Free will.

Stapp: Quantum mechanics explains voluntary control of bodily actions. At its essential core quantum mechanics is a theory of the mind-brain connection in which acquisition of knowledge is achieved without any direct action of the physical upon the mental. "the ‘free will’ problem is to explain the connection between ‘willed’ physical actions and the conscious efforts that seem to be causing them. How, in the classical approach, does one explain how the conscious thoughts come into being at all, and in just the way that makes them appear to be doing just what, according to quantum mechanics, they actually are doing? And how can they, during the evolution of our species, evolve in just the right way as to be always in accord with what the brain is causing the body to do if there could be no adverse physical consequences of the thoughts themselves going completely haywire?

Neuroscience and philosophy have struggled for years with the mystery of how a physical motion can create (or be) a mental reality. By identifying that puzzle as a misleading relic of known-to-be-false early science we take a major step toward achieving a rationally coherent understanding of the mind-brain connection that is fully in accord with our deepest contemporary science. Stripping away the classical blinders allows us to see how the sophisticated quantum measurement process itself resolves the long-standing puzzles. It does so by doing exactly what that process is designed to do: enlighten the enquiring mind with the knowledge of physical properties that it actively seeks.

Von Neumann’s development of the theory of measurement allows the mental/psychological aspects of the agent to be cleanly separated from his bodily/physical aspects, and then explains how the agent acquires knowledge about the physical properties of his brain.

The basic idea of understanding all these phenomena is the superposition of electromagnetic fields, in particular biophotons, in a way that during biologically relevant time intervals within biologically relevant structures, interference patterns of destructive and constructive interference are built up that "organize" the movement and activity of the biomolecules within and between the cell populations, destructive interference of incoming and reflected wave at a non-linearly polarizable double layer. As a consequence, in the inside constructive interference takes place.

This sounds a lot like the magnetic flux tube model in Pitkänens theory. Consciousness arise in the quantum jumps.

Matjaž Perc, 2005: we show that the introduction of long-range couplings induces decoherence of otherwise coherent noise-induced spatial patterns - Importantly, already a small fraction of long-range couplings is sufficient to destroy coherent pattern formation. We argue that the small-world network topology destroys spatial order due to the lack of a precise internal spatial scale, which by regular connectivity is given by the coupling constant and the noise robust excursion time that is characteristic for the local dynamics.

Tiller also points out the two different pathways to knowledge in ancient times, called Mythos and Logos the inner and the outer path of knowledge. The inner path was seen as more sacred, and gave true knowledge, Gnosis. This is nothing more than the potential informational well, pointing to a storage of memories in the virtual world, experienced in form of collective consciousness and archetypes. Jung talked of these too, and of other 'virtual figures' like Anima, Animus, The shadow etc. This form of matter is highly intelligent? Pitkänen links it to dark matter.

The possibility of macroscopic quantum states in biological systems seems unlikely. Everything depends on coherent states. And as in technological proposals, perfect isolation of the quantum state from the environment (and/or quantum error correction codes) would be required while the system must also somehow communicate with the external world. Living cells including the brain's neurons seem unsuitably warm and wet for delicate quantum states which would seem susceptible to thermal noise and environmental decoherence. However specific conditions supporting quantum states - in microtubules, meridians, nerves etc. may have evolved. As Rakovic say: Nature has solved the noise problem. The coherent superpositional states are created by shielding and isolation, polarization, etc. The wave and the surfer.

Environmental decoherence (noise) collapse the quantum state in classical systems, but in living systems noise is creating coherence up to a limit. The coherence give entangled, temporal, isolated quantum systems (subselves). Superimposed on one degree of freedom = the whole body, or a subfractal system of the body? The holographic principle states that the part acts as the whole, the part is a mirror of the whole, or contrarily.

Quantum computation with objective reduction may be somehow involved in consciousness.


Quantum consciousness.
Stuart Hameroff, the highest function of life—consciousness—is likely a quantum phenomenon too. This is illustrated, he says, through anesthetics. The brain of a patient under anesthesia continues to operate actively, but without a conscious mind at work.
One can ask how this is possible? It must mean that consciousness is not created in the brain, only that it is switched off with anesthetics. The brain acts like a lens for the light, and consciousness is the light?

What enables anesthetics such as xenon or isoflurane gas to switch off the conscious mind? Hameroff speculates that anesthetics “interrupt a delicate quantum process” within the neurons of the brain. Anesthetics, Hameroff says, dissolve inside tiny oily regions of the microtubules, affecting how some electrons inside these regions behave.

The action unfolds like this:
When certain key electrons are in one "place," call it to the "left," part of the microtubule is squashed; when the electrons fall to the "right", the section is elongated. But the laws of quantum mechanics allow for electrons to be both “left” and "right" at the same time, and thus for the micro­tubules to be both elongated and squashed at once. Each section of the constantly shifting system has an impact on other sections, potentially via quantum entanglement, leading to a dynamic quantum-mechanical dance.

It is in this faster-than-light subatomic communication, Hameroff says, that consciousness is born. Anesthetics get in the way of the dancing electrons and stop the gyration at its quantum-mechanical core; that is how they are able to switch consciousness off.


Consciousness and brain.
Can consciousness be created as Hamerhoff say? His model has meet a lot of critique.

Chris Carter, the man inventing the X-files, writes: In his book 1891, Ferdinand Schiller proposes that ‘matter is admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting and restraining the consciousness which it encases.’ He argues that the simpler physical structure of ‘lower beings’ depresses their consciousness to a lower point, and that the higher organizational complexity of man allows a higher level of consciousness.
This consciousness should be awareness. In other words, consciousness and awareness are like night and day. Awareness is constraining the consciousness.

Matter is not what produces consciousness but what limits it and confines its intensity within certain limits … This explanation admits the connection of Matter and Consciousness, but contends that the course of interpretation must proceed in the contrary direction. Thus it will fit the facts which Materialism rejected as ‘supernatural’ and thereby attains to an explanation which is ultimately tenable instead of one which is ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the possibility of which no evidence in favour of Materialism can possibly affect.

As for the effects of brain injury, Schiller argues that an equally good explanation is to say that the manifestation of consciousness has been prevented by the injury, rather than extinguished by it. With regard to memory, he thinks that it is forgetfulness rather than memory that is in need of a physical explanation: pointing out the total recall experienced under hypnosis and ‘the extraordinary memories of the drowning and dying generally’, he argues that we never really forget anything, but rather are prevented from recalling it by the limitations of the brain.

This article is also here, with links.

That's it. It is our left brainhalf that make us human, by compressing our consciousness and making our awareness emerge. The same thing is happening when we concentrate on something. Our attention becomes very narrow. Or when we remember something, think at something... The logic thinking is a critical action, constraining us very much. This is the entropic brain, entropy is creativity, negentropy is the constrainment. All matter is negentropic. Life is negentropic. Or is it?
The brain is therefore both ‘the organ of attention to life’ and an obstacle to wider awareness. He speculates that if the brain is a limiting obstacle, filtering out forms of consciousness not necessary for the organism’s biological needs, then freedom from the body may well result in a more extended form of consciousness, which continues along its path of creative evolution.

The brain is not an organ that generates consciousness, but rather an instrument evolved to transmit and limit the processes of consciousness and of conscious attention so as to restrict them to those aspects of the material environment which at any moment are crucial for the terrestrial success of the individual. In that case such phenomena as telepathy and clairvoyance would be merely instances in which some of the limitations were removed.
Something is wrong with our entropic model of the Universe? It is like two circles eating each other. The Ouroborus.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson (living too at 1800) held similar ideas to those of Schiller. Bergson attempted to reconcile physical determinism with the apparent freedom of human behavior by proposing a theory of evolution whereby matter is crossed by creative consciousness: matter and consciousness interact, with both being elemental components of the universe, neither reducible to the other.

The wave never collapse? It is our perception that creates only one possibility in the quantum tunnelling? The collapse is in our perception? In reality there are also the wave all the time. The Schrödinger cat is both dead and living. It is we that see only one possibility. Our modern science is leading us astray? We don't see the forest for all trees.

Tiller has looked at this aspect very closely and has arrived at odd results.


References.
-Henry Stapp's online papers and book
-Matti Pitkänens online papers and books.
-Dejan Rakovic online papers and books.
-Fritz-Albert Popp online papers.
- Wilhelm Tiller online papers and books.

Stuart Hamerhoff. Quantum computation in brain microtubules? The Penrose-Hameroff "Orch OR" model of consciousness. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html

William A. Tiller, 2003: CONSCIOUS ACTS OF CREATION: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW PHYSICS*. http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/user_files/documents/doublebonusdownload.pdf

Matjaž Perc 2005: Spatial decoherence induced by small-world connectivity in excitable media. New J. Phys. 7 252. http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/7/1/252/fulltext

Wojciech H. Zurek, 2002: Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical—Revisited. Los Alamos Science Number 27. http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0306/0306072.pdf

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, 2003: DECOHERENCE, EINSELECTION, AND THE QUANTUM ORIGINS OF THE CLASSICAL. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0105/0105127v3.pdf

Luigi Amico, 2008: Entanglement in Many-Body Systems. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0703/0703044v3.pdf