Quantum Mind
This post will not make much sense to you unless you (a) know something about the bizarre math of Quantum Mechanics and (b) something about the way the brain works. I'm not sure I can even include myself in this rarified company.
Quantum Mechanics talks about a "vector" of "state variables" that describe the state of a system. The system my be as simple as a proton or as complex as a chair (in principal). Each state variable describes things like charge, position, velocity, spin and so forth for *all* the particles in the system. The whole mess is usually referred to by the Greek Letter Phi.
Phi *changes* over time, so the Phi function (in principal again) provides a way to *predict* the future state of the system, or, more precisely, what we would get if we made measurements of the system at a given time.
One interesting feature of these state variables is that they often use "imaginary numbers" -- an individual property, such as a position, can be represented as an imaginary number (typically describing a wave). The property only becomes "real" when a measurement is made, in which case the imaginary part of the property magically vanishes, leaving a "real" part that is famously unpredictable. This gives us particles that are in two places at once and other unsettling phenomena.
Now for the brain.
I imagine that the "state" of the brain could be represented by a vast state vector. In principal, such a vector would include an element for the activation state of each neuron, but a more approximate state vector could include the activation state of an entire brain subsystem, such as the pre-frontal lobes of the brain. The neurons of such systems tend to be in similar states. We even have a use for our imaginary variables since wave functions are *essential* if we are to describe small-scale things like neurons "firing" or larger functions such as alpha rhythms. Even larger, longer waves would need to be taken account of such as the diurnal cycle of wakefulness and sleep.
I would expect that a lot of very interesting properties of the brain would "drop out" of the math, including limitations to measurement (the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), interference properties, coherence and many other extremely useful concepts that are the bread and butter of Quantum Mechanics. As in Quantum Mechanics, experimental results would tend to be most accessible for very small systems, (such as individual neurons) and more illusive for systems consisting of billions of neurons bathed in hundreds of neurotransmitters, peptides and hormones.
Even so, I would expect that such an approach might make sense out of some of the large scale phenomena observed in the brain such as EEG patterns. Descriptions and "explanations" of these patterns seem to be (at present) merely descriptive without the mathematical underpinning we expect in a real science. This may be (don't quote me!) due to the fact that even the leading researchers in the biological Sciences know little of mathematics past what they learned (and forgot) in High School.
Like most of my good ideas, this one has probably been stolen years before I thought of it. I'll be on the lookout for somebody who will explain this idea to me better than I can :)
I also venture to predict that there are folks out there who have glimpsed this idea and feel free to chatter about ideas like "coherence" of the mind, just as we see endless bullshit that attempts to tie "relativity" to any crazy idea that comes down the pike. Personally, I'd look for a few lines of real math (a Phi function for example). Otherwise, we're just dealing with a new category of bullshit.
Quantum Mechanics talks about a "vector" of "state variables" that describe the state of a system. The system my be as simple as a proton or as complex as a chair (in principal). Each state variable describes things like charge, position, velocity, spin and so forth for *all* the particles in the system. The whole mess is usually referred to by the Greek Letter Phi.
Phi *changes* over time, so the Phi function (in principal again) provides a way to *predict* the future state of the system, or, more precisely, what we would get if we made measurements of the system at a given time.
One interesting feature of these state variables is that they often use "imaginary numbers" -- an individual property, such as a position, can be represented as an imaginary number (typically describing a wave). The property only becomes "real" when a measurement is made, in which case the imaginary part of the property magically vanishes, leaving a "real" part that is famously unpredictable. This gives us particles that are in two places at once and other unsettling phenomena.
Now for the brain.
I imagine that the "state" of the brain could be represented by a vast state vector. In principal, such a vector would include an element for the activation state of each neuron, but a more approximate state vector could include the activation state of an entire brain subsystem, such as the pre-frontal lobes of the brain. The neurons of such systems tend to be in similar states. We even have a use for our imaginary variables since wave functions are *essential* if we are to describe small-scale things like neurons "firing" or larger functions such as alpha rhythms. Even larger, longer waves would need to be taken account of such as the diurnal cycle of wakefulness and sleep.
I would expect that a lot of very interesting properties of the brain would "drop out" of the math, including limitations to measurement (the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), interference properties, coherence and many other extremely useful concepts that are the bread and butter of Quantum Mechanics. As in Quantum Mechanics, experimental results would tend to be most accessible for very small systems, (such as individual neurons) and more illusive for systems consisting of billions of neurons bathed in hundreds of neurotransmitters, peptides and hormones.
Even so, I would expect that such an approach might make sense out of some of the large scale phenomena observed in the brain such as EEG patterns. Descriptions and "explanations" of these patterns seem to be (at present) merely descriptive without the mathematical underpinning we expect in a real science. This may be (don't quote me!) due to the fact that even the leading researchers in the biological Sciences know little of mathematics past what they learned (and forgot) in High School.
Like most of my good ideas, this one has probably been stolen years before I thought of it. I'll be on the lookout for somebody who will explain this idea to me better than I can :)
I also venture to predict that there are folks out there who have glimpsed this idea and feel free to chatter about ideas like "coherence" of the mind, just as we see endless bullshit that attempts to tie "relativity" to any crazy idea that comes down the pike. Personally, I'd look for a few lines of real math (a Phi function for example). Otherwise, we're just dealing with a new category of bullshit.
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