Microtubules and human consciousness

Dylan Stoll | Copy Editor

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay

René Descartes, a famous philosopher from the 17th century, once stated: “I think, therefore I am.” These were the pioneering words that pushed humanity forward into the abstract world that is the concept of consciousness—a world that, over three centuries later, still remains a mystery.

Today, there are many theories as to how consciousness occurs. Bernard Baars, for instance, a neuroscientist at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, believes that consciousness is the result of broadcasting information from a store of memories within the brain. Another neuroscientist—Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has come to the conclusion that consciousness is a complicated interweaving of sensory and cognitive inputs.

One of the more peculiar, and more intriguing theories, comes from the minds of two individuals from two very different backgrounds. A noted physicist by the name of Sir Roger Penrose, known for his work on black holes with Stephen Hawking, and Stuart Hameroff, an anaesthesiologist from the University of Arizona, have come up with an idea known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (OORT).

The theory states that EEG rhythms, or brain waves, derive from deeper level quantum vibrations found somewhere within the cells of the brain. Scientists have argued that the theory is preposterous, that the brain is too “warm, wet and noisy” for quantum processes to occur, but as time passed, the supposedly illogical theory found some solidity.

The OORT holds its ground in the relatively recent discovery by a group of researchers at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan, of quantum vibrations within the microtubules of neurons.

These vibrations are important to the theory because, as stated before, what Penrose and Hameroff suggested was that there is a quantum process called quantum coherence occurring somewhere in the neurons of the brain. In fact, Hameroff himself said that quantum coherence could be occurring somewhere within the microtubules; now they know that Hameroff’s suggestion may very well be correct.

Microtubules have many known functions within the cell: they provide structure and support for the cell; they allow intracellular transport of vesicles; they are a key component in chromosome segregation; and they provide cell mobility, through organelles known as flagella and cilia. The symmetrical, lattice-like nature of the microtubules is what Penrose states “reeks of something quantum mechanical.”

Microtubules can be analogously thought of as the train tracks that transport goods from one side of the country to the other; the steel beams that hold a building up; or the propellers that push a boat through water.

So it’s no wonder that it’s difficult for other researchers, especially neuroscientists, to see microtubules as the source of something as seemingly immaterial as consciousness itself.

Despite the controversy surrounding the theory, if it were to be proven correct, it could solve one of philosophy’s age-old questions: How can free will exist, in a universe that may be deterministic?

There is a theory that free will is non-existent, and that every decision one makes, every thought one has, is the result of some previous situation, or cause. For example, if a man made a decision to get something to eat, it was because he was hungry; his decision to get something to eat was determined by his hunger. The food that he went to buy was also determined, by an exposure to that particular food at a certain age; the grocery store that he went to was determined by the prices at that location, et cetera. Everything that happens, from the Big Bang, to the food a man fills his fridge with, is determined by some preceding event.

So how can true free will exist, if every choice we make is determined by a preceding event? Does free will even exist, or is it an illusion?

With OORT, the quantum vibrations in question provide an indeterministic approach to consciousness; they allow for a decision-making process that, in its source of origin, can be random. In other words, the quantum nature of the vibrations allow free will to exist in the mind.

To better understand how the quantum world operates, there is a thought experiment created by the well-known physicist Erwin Schrödinger. He asked that one imagines a box that contains a cat. The cat is fed by a mechanism that has a 50 per cent chance to either release food into the box, or a poison. The observer of the box will never know whether or not the cat is dead, unless he opens the box and looks inside. In effect, the cat exists in a limbo; it is both dead, and alive.

But when the observer opens the box, he finds that the cat is dead. When particles are in a quantum state, they can be in many different states at once, but when the observer views those particles, they ‘choose’ a state; this is quantum coherence. That’s how qubits, or quantum bits, work in a quantum computer. A regular bit is either on, or off, but qubits exist in multiple states until coming together at once.

This is why OORT can possibly provide a space for free will to exist; if consciousness holds its roots in some sort of quantum mechanism (i.e quantum vibrations within microtubules), then the quantum nature of that mechanism allows for a more random decision-making process to occur.

How that process works exactly, has yet to be determined: “What I’m saying—and this is my leap of imagination which people boggle at—I’m saying what’s going on in the brain must be taking advantage not just of quantum mechanics, but where it goes wrong,” Penrose says. “It’s where quantum mechanics needs to be superseded.”

Many researchers agree that true artificial intelligence can only be created with the assistance of quantum computing. What if the human brain is essentially just an organic, three-pound, quantum computer?

Only time will tell, but whatever the answer, here’s to hoping free will isn’t an illusion.