Talk:Orchestrated objective reduction

Update

I have watched with amusement over the years as repeated attempts have been made in this talk section to take this theory down, and all have failed. Yes, it is still alive and well :)

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.26.215 (talk) 12:34, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

The basis for this theory has been proven now and it is highly plausible. It was proposed with little science but as the science is done is does hold water. While the entire theory has not been proven, all arguments thought to disprove it have been proven wrong or at-least inconclusive. Not everything Sir Roger Penrose has published has proven true but, I know him personally, and he has never published anything with no scientific validity. [[1]] Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness.

I'm guessing that you are Vahe Gurzadyan? Can you guess what gave you away?137.205.183.109 (talk) 16:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

When Wikipedians declare valid science to be "of no scientific validity" and violently damage the career and malign the reputation a living person it is dangerous and a violation of everything Wikipedia stands for. Journal References:

   Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory. Physics of Life Reviews, 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002
   Stuart Hameroff, MD, and Roger Penrose. Reply to criticism of the ‘Orch OR qubit’–‘Orchestrated objective reduction’ is scientifically justified. Physics of Life Reviews, 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.11.00
   Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose. Consciousness in the universe. Physics of Life Reviews, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002 Scottprovost (talk) 07:48, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

back in 2006 someone spoke out of turn

This article should be little more than a stub. Penrose's ideas on this topic have no scientific validity. Microtubules can't vibrate in the low Reynolds number environment of the cytoplasm! IlliniWikipedian 17:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe I've heard that criticism before. Doesn't that violate Wikipedia's rules against original research? ;-) But actually, I don't think the point is valid. The idea is that viscosity renders rapid motion with respect to the cytoplasm impossible. But objects at finite temperature also vibrate in place! And since a microtubule actually consists of thousands of coupled subunits, there is certainly scope for quite complicated vibrational dynamics to arise... You might be interested in Keskin et al's work on fluctuation dynamics in the tubulin dimer. Mporter 05:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but the text on such a controversial and, let's be frank, not widely accepted subject needs to be written in a much, much more balanced way. Bardon Dornal 13:12, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree, but I think there may be more to it than that. For one, Orch-OR seems to be a not terribly obvious expansion of Penrose's original proposals. Those appear to be limited to GR as a "counteracting" force on quantum evolution, in that GR will force a superposition to collapse (measurement-free, importantly) into a single observable for what appear to be really simple reasons. In a recent talk for the Perimeter Institute, there no mention at all of the microtubulin side of things. Frankly, from this outsider's perspective, I'm not sure why there ever was any work down this direction -- it seems premature at a minimum.

So the problem is that there should really be an article on OR itself. This is notably interesting right now, because they are actually going to test it in a lab shortly. OR makes physical predictions that differ from pure-collapse models over short time scales, time scales that can be "easily" duplicated with modern equipment.

Maury 22:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Theory vs Fact

I am totally confused, reading this article, between the parts which mean "the theory says this" and the parts which mean "reputable scientific testing has shown this to be true". I suggest that someone who is familiar with orch or separates the two into different sections of the article. I was debating whether to mark it as unverified, but separation would be better. If nobody here has the knowledge + time to do this, it should be marked. Ricky 14:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, because the whole matter rests on the question of "do the distance scales involved make quantum issues relevant?". In this case, there are a few unproven assumptions, and definite correspondences that the theory could explain, if true. Much like String theory, Orch-OR allows one to derive the observables in a handy way, but explains by way of structures that are extremely difficult or perhaps impossible to observe. So; there are maybe three categories instead of two. There is "conjecture and unprovable speculation," there is "reasonable development, given the assumptions," and there is "these are the actual observables, and how they correspond with what the theory predicts." I'm trying to make better sense of this topic myself, and I expect I'll do some editing here. I want to clean up the whole quantum mind topic range, to make it more accurately describe what those who come to the topic believe in, while better qualifying what is factual, and stressing what we actually know (or don't know).

I expect that will be a lot of work! JonathanD 02:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The facts in Orch OR are very few, and a lot of biological mismodelling is there - for example the DLB biology, where paper by De Zeew et al., 1995 is quoted as reference but the De Zeew paper says exactly the opposite. More on the Orch OR has been released at PhilSci: Georgiev, Danko (2006) Falsifications of Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR Model of Consciousness and Novel Avenues for Development of Quantum Mind Theory. I hope someone may use the paper uploaded PhilSci and sort out, what is reliable fact in Orch OR, and what is sci fi construction. Danko Georgiev MD 11:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Penrose's collapse theory vs. The Penrose-Hameroff consciousness theory

It should be emphasised that the theory proceeds in two stages -- a theory about collapse, and a theory about consciousness. It is possible for the first to succeed while the second fails. The collapse theory and the consciousness theory should perhaps be placed into separate articles. The collapse theory (Objective Reduction) could then be linked into the interpretation of quantum mechanics article which currently does not mention spontaneous collapse models.1Z 17:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• • I agree with this observation and I like the suggestion --Myscience 21:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Testing the theory

The article states: "20 testable predictions of Orch OR were published in 1998. A number of these have been validated, others are being tested. Orch OR is falsifiable".

I assume this refers to OR as a theory of collpase, which is indeed testable. It is difficult to see how it could be tested as a claim about consciousness1Z 17:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

In fact 19 of the predictions refer to predictions to do with microtubules, quantum coherence in the brain etc and only one refers to OR. However, Penrose in 2004 and 2006 has mentioned schemes to test OR, and there might actually be one in a few years. Persephone19 20:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This can be slightly updated in line with Hameroff's latest publication. A few of the testable predictions have been validated, such as signalling along microtubules, correlation of synaptic activity with cytoskeletal change, action of psychoactive drugs on microtubules and gap junction mediation of gamma (40Hz) synchrony. Other predictions are said to be currently under test. Persephone19 17:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

This definitely has to mention what the predictions are. Otherwise it's just propaganda. Thehotelambush 03:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Here are the 20 predictions in abbreviated form: 1) Synaptic sesnitivity and plasticity correlates with cytoskeletal architecture and activity.2) Microtubules involved with the action of psychoactive drugs. 3) Drugs acting on microtubules to prove useful with Alzheimers and other brain diseases. 4) Laser spectroscopy will demomstrate coherent excitations in microtubules. 5) Vibrational states in microtubular networks correlate with cellular activity. 6) Stable patterns in cytoskeletal networks correlate with memory and other brain functions. 7) Cortical dendrites shown to have predominantly 'A' lattice microtubules, which are more suitable for information processing. 8) Demonstration of quantum correlations between microtubules, including microtubules in different neurons. 9) Experiments with superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to demonstrate quantum coherence in microtubules. 10) Coherent photons will be detected emitted from microtubules. 11) Microtubules in cortical dendrites intermittently surrounded by tightly cross linked actin gels. 12) Cycles of gelation in neuronal cytoplasm correlated with 40Hz oscillation on cell membranes. 13) Gelation cycles shown to be regulated by calcium ions. 14) Gap junction shown to link synchronously firing cortical neurons and thalamocortical network. 15) Quantum tunnelling at gap junctions demonstrated. 16) Quantum correlation shown between microtubules in different neurons connected by gap junctions. 17) Neural mass involved in a cognitive task is inversley proportional to precognitive time. 18) Isolated quantum superpositions collapse spontaneously in a timespan governed by Penrose's E=h bar/t, effectively the greater the energy involved the faster the time to collapse. This is the only prediction related to Penrose's orchestrated reduction. The others are all brain related. 19) Microtubule based cilia in rods and cones detect photons and connect with retinal gial cell microtubules via gap junctions. 20) The fossil record will show that organism emerged in the early Cambrain with a complex cytoskeleton and the capability for quantum isolation. The full text of this can be found on pp. 242-4 of 'The Emerging Physics of Consciousness' Ed. Jack Tuszynski, in Hameroff's chapter entitled 'Consciousness, neurobiology and quantum mechanics. Persephone19 21:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The Penrose collapse theory

The article states: "Penrose considered superposition as a separation in underlying reality at its most basic level, the Planck scale. Tying quantum superposition to general relativity, he identified superposition as spacetime curvatures in opposite directions, hence a separation in fundamental spacetime geometry. However, according to Penrose, such separations are unstable and will reduce at an objective threshold, hence avoiding multiple universes."

This passage is riddled with errors. I suggest replacing it with a paragraph taken ftom Penrose's own writings.1Z 18:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.110.127.136 (talk) 23:53, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Quantum computation and hypercomputation

The article states: "Quantum computation had been suggested by Paul Benioff, Richard Feynman and David Deutsch in the 1980s. The idea is that classical information, e.g. bit states of either 1 or 0, could also be quantum superpositions of both 1 and 0 (quantum bits, or qubits). Such qubits interact and compute by nonlocal quantum entanglement, eventually being measured/observed and reducing to definite states as the solution. Quantum computations were shown to have enormous capacity if they could be constructed e.g. using qubits of ion states, electron spin, photon polarization, current in Josephson junction, quantum dots etc. During quantum computation, qubits must be isolated from environmental interaction to avoid loss of superposition, i.e. “decoherence”."

This repeats a common misunderstanding. Quantum computation as proposed by David Deutsch,etc, is not known to transcend what can be done with a Turing machine. It is not hypercomputation. What Penrose has is a proposal that the (currently unknown) mechanism of collapse is hypercomputational. Conventional quantum computation is not hypercomputational and does not exploit collapse, but rather superposition. Every aspect of QM except collapse is known to be Turing-emulable. There is no research programme based on collapse, because no-one knows what collapse is, whether it works, or even whether it exists.1Z

Doesn't this suggest that the turing model is not even designed to address the issue of consciousness? Turing was after intelligence. Intelligence can clearly be emulated without the emergence of a subjective experience. Watson on Jeopardy spontaneously asking "Why can't I tell the difference between a man and woman in my answers?" would be an expression of consciousness.

It strikes me that consciousness might only be verifiable with the application of intelligence but that intelligence, nor models aimed at expressing it, is not consciousness. It doesnt even seem to be obviously correlated as animals of varying intelligencea are conscious. Which means that turing machines don't get at the heart of the issue. Or as searle would say: rules and lists are never enough.User:arnshea

Libet and time

The article states: "Experiments in the 1970s by Benjamin Libet suggested that conscious experience of sensory inputs requires up to 500 ms of brain activity, but is referred backward in time to the initial input. Quantum mechanics allows backward time effects as long as causal paradox is not possible (killing your grandmother, preventing your birth is one commonly cited example). Backward referral of unconscious quantum information avoids possible causal paradox, and could explain Libet’s results, real time unified sensory experience and conscious control, rescuing consciousness from the unfortunate role of illusory epiphenomenon."

This is a complete misrepresentation of Benjamin Libet's work. He nowhere invokes literal time travel. His "backwards referral" is no more time travel than manipulating the timestamps of files on a computer.1Z 18:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Motivation: The Hard Problem vs. super-Turing mathematicians.

It should be made clearer that the "problem of consciousness" Penrose (rather than Hameroff) is addressing is not the standard one as understood by philosophers, ie the hard problem. Penrose introduces his own version of the problem of consciousness with the controversial argument that human mathematicians can do things that no computer can. (Argument originated by John Lucas). AFAIK, it was Hameroff who suggested that . "Precursors of conscious experience (proto-conscious qualia) are postulated to exist as fundamental, irreducible components of the universe like mass, spin or charge embedded at the Planck scale since the Big Bang." Despite the phraseology, this is an essentially metaphysical claim, and not an uncommon one. It could be bolted on to any other physical theory. Thus, the Penrose-Hameroff theory does not come to a *physical* resolution of the *standard* problem of consciousness. It has a physical proposal to sole the idiosyncratic Lucas-Penrose problem of super-Turing mathematicians, and a metaphysical solution (not original) to the hard problem of consciousness as widely understood. 1Z 18:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The thing I find odd about all of this is that Penrose's alternate mechanics indirectly solves the observer problem.

I have never heard of an "observer problem". There is a measurement problem and consciousness causes collapse is one, highly controversial, proposal to solve it. If you think all approaches to the Measurement Problem must involve consciousness or observers, you are mistaken.1Z 20:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, he basically posits that small spacial distributions of probability are self-collapsed by gravity. So this being the case, why posit that there is a built-in "universal consciousness quanta"?

His theory of measurement/collapse does not depend on his theory of consciousness. His theory of conciousness is built on his theory of measurement/collapse.1Z 20:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This is clearly due to me not understanding what they are really saying -- but that's my point, this article doesn't really get the the root of it, IMHO. Maury 21:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Penrose thinks there is something not governed by algorithms in the brain. The only process in the universe that is not governed by algorithms appears to be the collapse of the wave function. As normally described this is random and not apparently very helpful for mathematical understanding, hence the proposition of a version of collapse which is non-random but also non-computable. Is this metaphysical? I am not sure in what sense the word is being used here. However, Penrose and Hammeroff assert plausible tests both for objective reduction of the wave function and for quantum coherence and other features in the brain. Persephone19 20:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to re-ask my question. If one removes all mentions of brains and consciousness, does Penrose's wavefunction collapse physics still work? IE, do you need a brain, or just gravity? The recent talk I saw seemed to suggest the later, but I came in half way. Maury 19:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The OR collapse is first given as a resolution of the wave function collapse problem. This is best described in Penrose's second book, 'Shadows of the Mind' and particularly in Chapter 6, especially 6.10 and 6.11, pp335-9. This chapter follows on a long discussion of the problems in quantum theory. The part about the brain comes later. If Penrose's scheme is right, OR collapses would have been happening billions of years before the first brains evolved. Persephone19 18:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that's the feeling I got from the talk. But in retrospect I realize I asked the question incorrectly: forget brains, that's not what I meant, I meant "some sort of mechanical-like OR collapsing gizmo". IE, does Penrose's OR require anything other than gravity at all? (BTW, I'm ordering the book as I type this...) Maury 20:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, the superpositions are reduced by gravity alone. The only qualification is that in the later version of the theory in 'Shadows of the Mind', the reduction does not automatically cut in at the Planck Length. Instead the system becomes unstable from this point on, and liable to reduction, on the principle that the greater the difference between the superpositions the shorter the expected time to reduction. The process is compared to the decay of an unstable uranium nucleus.Persephone19 17:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, ok, so I think the talk I saw was basically what you have described here. And it's particularly interesting too, because it has clearly testable predictions that are currently under experiment (or will be shortly). I think this is the first direct test of a quantum formalism in a while now.

But of course I can't help coming back to my first, potentially rhetorical, question: why would Penrose be drawn off into this highly speculative topic? I'm all for musings, but by creating an early connection between his QM formalism and consciousness, I personally feel the former was "tainted" by the generally poor reception of the later.

Back to reality: this thread suggests that there should be a single complete article on OR alone. I'm going to get a copy of Shadows ASAP, but I also have his latest "big book" at home which I'm sure covers much of this as well. Maury 19:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

1Z, please respond at the bottom of the thread, it's hard to follow your posts otherwise. Anyway we're all quite aware of the different approaches to the measurement problem, which should have been clear from the following discussion. The issue that we're trying to understand is why he would go on to develop a theory of consciousness based on it, something that is so completely different that there doesn't appear to be any connection. Oh, I'm perfectly aware that they attempted to link the two, but given the fragile basis for the claim it seems odd anyone even bothered. As one reviewer put it, the basic line of reasoning is "quantum is weird, consciousness is weird too, they must be related!". And you definitely seem to re-enforce my opinion that OR should be split out. Maury 22:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's just that Penrose had approached things from the other angle. At the end of the 1980s, he decided for whatever reason to address the problem of consciousness. He formed the (highly contentious) view that the Godel Theorem meant that there was something non-computable in human mathematical understanding. Only after this did he go looking for its physical basis. He homed in on the collapse because this was not governed by algorithms. But the collapse is random and pretty useless for mathematical understanding. Hence the suggestion that the new type of collapse, OR, might be non-computable. However, OR's non-computability is not just a convenient hypothesis, there is a at least a small amount of supporting argument for why OR might be non-computable. In fact, there are really three questions. (1) Does OR exist? (2) Is it non-computable? (3)Does it have any connection with what goes on in the brain?

One thing I would add is that whatever you may think of Penrose arguments, the review you quote is an absolute travesty. Penrose's line of argument is something like what I've tried to outline above, and he never argued anything as idiotic as that the two things had to be connected simply because they were mysterious or weird. Persephone19 14:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

It seems a pity that the dispute over the neutrality has not been resolved despite more than a year of discussion recorded above. Reading the article again, the main problem seems to be in the questions section that forms the second half of the paper. This tends to read as if it were dispatching the arguments against quantum consciousness once and for all. In particular the discussion about possible screening of the microtubules needs to make it clear that there is no definite evidence that such screening would prove effective. I think the problem could be resolved by integrating the answers to the questions into the main part of the text, where some of the points are already touched on. I will attempt this soon if no one's going to have a stab at achieving neutrality. This would be an editorial exercise leaving as little as possible of the actual material changed. Persephone19 19:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC) d a

I just called up this article hoping to find some useful information to inform a discussion I'm having. I find the neutrality of this article highly suspect, and will not use it as a significant source. The "Questions" section also caught my eye as reading more like propaganda than anything else. --Skidoo 01:03, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you about the questions section drifting away from the desired neutrality, which is why I intend to have a go at editing this by mid-September, if no one else wants to do anything. However, I think it's an over reaction not to use the article at all, as the better bits give a reasonably accurate version of the Penrose/Hameroff position, and even the 'propaganda' bits do at least deal with topics that have been widely discussed in the literature. Persephone19 13:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Editing of article

I have as promised in previous postings undertaken a substantial editing of the Orch OR article, with the aim of eventually getting rid of the disputed neutrality tag at the top. At the same time, I have left almost all of the original material. The main change has been to get rid of the 'Questions' section, which has been criticised as propaganda. However, most of the material from this has been integrated into the main part of the article. I have also sprinkled in more neutrality tags in the form of conditional verbs or 'the theory suggests' etc. I have brought in a small amount of new material, mainly a para on research suggesting the need for quantum computing in the brain, reports of some experiments relevant to quantum coherence in the brain and a list of the 20 tests proposed by asically Hameroff, which was already mentioned in the old form of the article. Lastly there are a lot more references. The hope is that we can use the new version of the article and changes to it to move towards a consensus on neutrality. Persephone19 18:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there anyone out there? I thought the sunstantial editing would generate quite a lot of discussion, But not so. I would now suggest that the present article could do with further streamlining to make it to the point. Apart from various minor editing, I would suggest the following. (1) Takeout the second part of para 2, basically the diversion into artificial intelligence etc. (2) Take out the bit about fullerene technology and the rest of that para down from there. (3) Take out the para on why Orch OR events cause subjective experience and the subsequent long para re the Big Bang.(4) Take out the end part of the para that refers to Alfred North Whitehead and the subsequent para on consciousnesss as a sequence of discrete events and the next one on frequency of quantum events. (5) In the 'Decoherence section' take out the second half of para 3. (6) Abbreviate the bit on Hameroff's replies on objections other than decoherence and the subsequent para on Libet.

All or most of these things can be found in the Penrose/Hameroff literature but some might be more suited to 600 page books that can afford to be discursive rather than a short article that arguable needs to get the gist of the theory over without getting bogged down in peripherals such as Libet and time.

I will leave this for two weeks now to await other ideas, objections or any one else who wants to edit. Persephone19 14:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Just a suggestion

There is dispute on the netrality of this article. However, this article isn't about whether Orch-OR is TRUE, it's just a description of orch-OR as a hypothesis. As such, a verbatim description of the hypothesis is, pretty much by definition, undisputable: whether or not it is TRUE, it IS what it is.

Personally, I would suggets that stating the hypothesis in a one-sided fashion, with just a subsection describing disputation, is a fair representation of teh topic, as long as it is clear in the introduction that it is only a hypothesis. 81.132.76.139 17:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The article has been altered since the neutrality dispute started with an aim to making it less slanted. I take your comment as a tentative step towards a consensus from removing the disputed neutrality label. Persephone19 22:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove disputed neutrality tag

The article has been given a second re-edit primarily aimed at ending the neutrality dispute. After the first re-edit there was only one comment on 4th October which I take as broadly supportive of a neutrality rating. I suggest giving it three weeks, and if there are no comments critical of neutrality by the end of that, the tag should be removed. Persephone19 19:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that. Also could someone please commnent on the statement at the end of the microtubules article that Orch-OR is regarded with skepticism in the scientific community. Many thanks! Amit@Talk 13:52, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Disputed Neutrality Tag

The version of this article which existed until 4th October could be argued to have overstepped the limits of neutrality, particularly in the question and answer section in the second half of the article, which tended to convey the impression of the theory as fact rather than speculative hypothesis.

The first revision of the article on 4th October mainly edited the question and answer section, attempting to retain relevant material in a form that stressed the element of speculation.

The second revision on 22nd October simplified the article by removing or reducing discussion of some non-core aspects of the theory.

Discussion has been invited so as to achieve consensus. Two postings appear favourable and there have been no negative postings. I accept that a wider discussion would have been desirable in arriving at a consensus. However, it seems desirable to move on given the substantial changes in the article.

If you still feel that the article is not neutral, please make the criticism specific so that the editors can try and rectify any problems. Persephone19 11:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Easy to open Pandora's box. The slightly mangled state of the existing article results partly from a struggle to agree neutrality. I've looked at the article and in practise opening up to a more general readership looks to require a substantially different and longer article with all sorts of possible problems on agreement. However, I will try out something aimed at the more general reader.Persephone19 (talk) 08:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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EDIT: Technical tag removed - see below - Guy Macon 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC) (Tag was added by) 69.140.152.55 (talk) 21:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

This page has been tagged as being too technical for most readers to understand since May of 2008, but the present page has been improved since then, so I am removing the tag. Also, WP:TECHNICAL: says "Technical templates added without explanation are likely to be either ignored or removed", and this one was added without an explanation and in the wrong location. Guy Macon 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Major Edit

I have had a first shot at a major re-edit, with a view to improving the accessibility for the general reader. Perhaps others would like to improve on this or make suggestions for improvements. Persephone19 (talk) 14:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

External Links?

How about some external links? e.g., Penrose's replies to various criticisms [2]

A lecture with a general overview Sir Roger Penrose's view on 'Science And The Mind'. [3]

Ufoolme (talk) 20:31, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd not heard the online talk before. I have put both the links into the 'see also' section. Persephone19 (talk) 18:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

On the number of Tubulin dimers per neuron

Hi all. I have just released in Nature precedings one recent manuscript, which actually destroys the whole Orch OR by pointing to a goof, which presumably is done by Hameroff in 1996 when he and Roger Penrose calculated the first estimates about the number of tubulins involved and Orch OR and respectively the number of "conscious neurons". The estimate by Hameroff of $10^{7}$ for the number of tubulin dimers per neuron is two orders of magnitude less compared to the calculated by me number of $1.3\times 10^{9}$. Hameroff and many other people following Hameroff have cited Yu and Baas (1994) article for the number $10^{7}$, however what actually Yu and Baas have measured is the total microtubule length in a single axonal projection being 56 micrometers long. If someone wants to use the figure from my manuscript, please feel free to do so. see Georgiev, Danko. Remarks on the number of tubulin dimers per neuron and implications for Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2009.3860.1> (2009) Regards, Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 10:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

At first glance I can't see that this is conclusive. Looking at the 1998 paper again, it seems that Hameroff needed the 2x10^10 tubulins and therefore arbitrarily went for 10% of what he thought was the number of tubulins in a neuron. But presumably he could have selected a larger or smaller percentage to give him the final total that he wanted. No doubt you can throw some light on this. Persephone19 (talk) 19:53, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the discussion is ongoing in the comment section of my preprint Remarks on the number of tubulin dimers per neuron and implications for Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR. Hameroff already contradicts himself and decided to replace part of these 15 pyramidal neurons with glial cells or GABA interneurons. I have replied why the "inflation argument", which reduces the number of coherent tubulins per neuron cannot work. Also please check the figures published by Hameroff - did he say that per MT there is for example only a single superposed tubulin?? Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 00:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI, Hameroff uses your 10^9-tubulin-per-neuron calculation in his most recent paper on Orch-OR. It doesn't impact the model at all, and it likely never did, since, in the old model, the number of tubulin required for a conscious moment was calculated ahead of time. The model is also exploratory. It was meant to explore certain possibilities over how Penrose's OR could occur in the brain, and with the new data in Hameroff's paper, it seems to be much cleaner than the guesswork they were (admittedly!) making earlier. 69.14.156.143 (talk) 13:36, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to talk about your "Falsification of the Hameroff Model" paper as well. It's riddled with errors that need to be addressed (they never relied on Freudian psychology, nor did they think gamma synchrony "causes consciousness"), and IMO, it shouldn't be included on this page for that reason. 69.14.156.143 (talk) 13:36, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Dubious claims

1. "obviously true" - this is misleading phrasing, the Goedel's theorems says that if the formal system is consistent then the Goedel sentence is true, however humans so far do not have shown special abilities to see directly whether a formal system is consistent or not. There are many known examples where contradictions are discovered in formal systems with classical example being the Russel's paradox in set theory, which then further evolved into ZFC set theory due to change of several comprehension axioms, etc.

2. "notably by philosophers" - critique by philosophers, who are not specialists in logic is not notable - there are several good critiques by mathematicians, which are indeed notable because are due to experts in logic - e.g. S. Feferman (Department of Mathematics, Stanford University) - 1995 http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/penrose.pdf

Philosophers are specialists in logic, hence Philosophy of logic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.232.204.150 (talk) 05:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Few philosophers are specialists in logic and among these are not those who philosophize on the mind-brain problem. By the way, my thesis was that an opinion from mathematician is more worthy than the opinion of a philosopher, because mathematicians and philosophers have different background knowledge, etc. Danko Georgiev (talk) 05:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Other Relevant Papers

This is actually the correct list of the papers, and so is evident that most of the titles are completely different, and moreover are irrelevant to Orch OR. Also, the fMRI or other methods of brain imaging cited have no effects on consciousness, so these are evidence against Q-mind, not support for it!

• Kanade, T. (1980), A theory of origami world Artificial Intelligence 13:279-279-311
• Kanade, T. (1981). Recovery of the Three-Dimensional Shape of an Object from a Single View. Artificial Intelligence 17:409-460
• Bialek, W. & Zee, A. (1987), Statistical mechanics and invariant perception. Physical Review Letters 58:741-744
• Bialek, W. & Sweitzer, A. (1985), Quantum Noise and the Threshold of Hearing. Physical Review Letters 54:725-728
• Tejada, J. (1996), Does Macroscopic Quantum Coherence Occur in Ferritin?". Science 272:424a
• Garg, A. (1996), Does Macroscopic Quantum Coherence Occur in Ferritin?". Science 272:424b
• Warren WS, Ahn S, Mescher M, Garwood M, Ugurbil K, Richter W, Rizi RR, Hopkins J, Leigh JS (1998), MR Imaging Contrast Enhancement Based on Intermolecular Zero Quantum Coherences". Science 1998 281: 247-251
• Rizi RR, Ahn S, Alsop DC, Garrett-Roe S, Schnall MD, Leigh JS, Warren WS (2000) “Intermolecular Zero Quantum Coherence Imaging of the Human Brain”, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 43, 627-632.
• Richter W, Richter M, Warren WS, Merkle H, Andersen P, Adriany G, Ugurbil K. Functional magnetic resonance imaging with intermolecular multiple-quantum coherences. Magn Reson Imaging. 2000;18:489–494.
• Prokhorenco, V. (2006). Coherent Control of Retinal Isomerization in Bacteriorhodopsin Science 313: 1257-1261.
• Binhi, V. & Savin, A. (2002), "Molecular gyroscopes and biological effects of very low frequency magnetic fields". Physical Review E 65:051912

Dubious claims/relevant papers

I have reworked the first para on Godel's theorem as a paraphrase of Kleene (1967) which is in the linked Wikipedia article.

The point about the philosophers is not that they are notable as philosophers, but that they tend to be extolled and referred to in consciousness studies. Hence, Susan Blackmore says that Churchland answers Penrose 'point by point'. I have, however, rephrased their bit to try and make that more apparent. Feferman is a bit of a problem as far as making the article more neutral is concerned, as he seems to be closer to Penrose than to mainstream consciousness studies. He says on p. 2 of his paper that he is convinced 'of the extreme implausibility of a computational model of the mind', and on p. 11, he describes how mathematicians proceed by insight and inspiration, and says that 'understanding' is 'just this aspect of mathematical thought that machines can never share with us.' He does however think that Penrose takes his argument too far, and he rejects Penrose's platonism. He is not convinced by Hameroff's neuroscience, but admits that he is not an expert on that side of the theory. In suggesting how consciousness might arise, he is well out of the mainstream in including micro-physics in his list of factors. I have tried to convey this as the gist in a bit inserted into the Objections to Orch OR section.

The point of most of the papers listed above is not that they show that brain imaging has or has no effect on consciousness,but that they relate to the possibility or not of sustained quantum coherence in the brain, the core argument relative to the plausibility of the theory. The Kanade and Bialek papers relate to whether classical computing is adequate as a basis for animal/human perception. This article has accumulated over a number of years, and in present day terms the Engel et al paper on quantum coherence in photosynthetic protein, published in Nature in 2007 and a series of papers on related areas also published in the last few years might be more interesting. However, it should be stressed that Engel etc were not researching consciousness, and there has been little apparent discussion of the papers in consciousness studies. I have tried to insert the correct titles for the references mentioned in your posting.

Hopefully, it might be possible to agree on the neutrality of the article as altered.Persephone19 (talk) 23:46, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi, i saw you did nice re-write on the Goedel theorem. Penrose is completely wrong about the implications of Goedel theorem and Feferman is only one of them to point out this fact. There is always a clause, which is present in the Goedel theorem - if the theory is consistent! Omitting this clause results in a statement that is stronger than Goedel's theorem, and insofar one always keeps this clause "if the theory is consistent", then you can ask a human also - do you think the Goedel sentence of this theory is true? So what the human will reply? He has no whatsoever additional power to answer whether a certain Goedel sentence is true compared to computer - neither the human nor the computer can answer that. So what Penrose omits to say to the reader is that every Goedel sentence is specific to some formal theory plus it is FALSE if the theory is inconsistent.

This image illustrates Hameroff's error upon which he based Orch OR. Hameroff frequently says in his works: “A typical brain neuron has roughly 10^7 tubulins (Yu and Baas, 1994)” or “Each brain neuron is estimated to contain about 10^7 tubulins (Yu and Bass, 1994)”, yet this is Hameroff's own miscalculation, which should not be attributed to Yu and Baas. Hameroff did not understand that Yu and Baas actually “reconstructed the microtubule (MT) arrays of a 56 μm axon from a cell that had undergone axon differentiation” and this reconstructed axon “contained 1430 MTs ... and the total MT length was 5750 μm”. A direct check shows that 10^7 tubulins correspond to this MT length of 5750 μm (to be precise 9.3 x 10^6 tubulins)

Anyway, let me remark on the "other relevant papers". Neither the origami paper, nor any other paper has anything to say about quantum mind. As I said, on the contrary the imaging papers are disproof of the Q-mind, because these coherences do not lead to effect upon consciousness or experience. I have published also various ideas about why Q-mind might be better compared to classical theories, but I would like to make clear the distinction between science and pseudoscience. Particularly Orch OR is the latter category, and I have published a dozen of mistakes in PhilSci article that has been later published in NeuroQuantology. If there are people interested in science they can read and decide for themselves, most of my friends cannot even believe that Hameroff did the mistake to confuse between embryonic hippocampal axon, and adult differentiated neuron. p.s. There is much more that can be said on Orch OR compared to what Hameroff thinks is appearing in literature. Apparently he missed not only my work, but also this paper: McKemmish, L. K., J. R. Reimers, R. H. McKenzie, A. E. Mark, and N. S. Hush (2009), Penrose-Hameroff orchestrated objective-reduction proposal for human consciousness is not biologically feasible, Physical Review E (Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics), 80(2), 021912-021916. Regards, Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 10:58, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

A remark to Persephone. Please do not be upset from my comments. I have written entirely Davydov_soliton article, and it received tag for unverified claims, though I have created nice reference section, and cited only accepted facts republished in more than 50-60 articles on the topic. I can suggest that you use the templates for citing scientific literature - see the source codes on the Davydov_soliton. Then I suggest inclusion of articles that are available in peer-reviewed journals, ArXiv, CogPrints, PhilSci, etc, and preferably being on the topic Orch OR, and not Q-mind [it has its own article]. And at least for me, it seems much better to have a clear list of all critical works, and details why Orch OR is considered to be unfeasible, not Hameroff's rebuttals which can be found on his web site, and moreover in most cases are off topic. And a remarkable quote from top-rated neurology journal:

Quantum theories of consciousness are rather like the Hydra. Despite stout-hearted efforts to slay the beast, it continues to sprout fresh heads in a frenzied fashion ... It is pretty clear that the Q-beast has now become self-propagating and impervious to common-sense contradiction. So, perhaps it is best just to erect warning signs around its corner of the scientific swamp and leave it be. From: McCrone, J. (2003), Quantum mind, The Lancet Neurology, 2, 450

My point is, normally science evolves by finding and resolving contradictions, Q-mind (and Orch OR) seems at present to avoid found problems by simply ignoring them. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 11:35, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia says any well known/often referred to theory or whatever is a valid subject for an article. Thus we have an article on astrology although science regards the topic as ridiculous. Given the requirement for neutrality, it probably isn't the place of the editors to argue whether it is pseudoscience or science. The article does try and point out that it's widely rejected, but it seems one should give the replies, again in the interests of neutrality. Perhaps the rejection bit should be a bit longer but there isn't an awful lot of peer reviewed material in this area, and most authors seem more than happy with Max Tegmark and Churchland. However, I will try to add something on the Reimer etc. (2009) paper as this is one of the only things that has any bearing on consciousness and the Engel etc papers. Persephone19 (talk) 13:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I have added Reimers et al to the latter apart of 'Objections.' and also to the list of material. I mention there is a reply to this from Hameroff although only on his website. Incidentally is is not correct to say rebuttals of other arguments are only on his website as the reply to Tegmark was published in Physical Review E, the same journal that Tegmark published in. If you think more peer-reviewed or otherwise authoritative material should be mentioned could you list this, as my own experience is that serious discussion of the topic is thin on the ground. If you can suggest some papers, I will try to insert their main arguments so that we can move towards an agreement on neutrality. Persephone19 (talk) 18:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi again. I decided to help a little, so I did incorporate the templates for citing of journal article and book in the section Creation of the Orch OR model (refs 4 & 5). So use these templates, and better discard all unnecessary info. For example. other relevant articles are irrelevant as I said on the brain imaging papers, also the same holds for photosynthesis - one should be completely ignorant of physics not to know that photosynthesis is capturing of photons, and hence is quantum process. What matters is how long lasts the coherence in time and how far it extends in space. Tegmark did not say that the brain cannot have quantum coherent processes at all, but that their decoherence timescale is shorter compared to the dynamic timescale in order the quantum coherence to have effect - he was speaking for Orch OR, and not for Davydov soliton, which has been detected for 15 picoseconds in myoglobin molecule for example. So my advice is to have only one reference section, now the article looks like total mess assembled from the yellow press. Better be only one reference section and all appearances of the articles to be at their correct place. For example you cannot cite the 1982 paper for Hameroff's 20 testable predictions. This is not a single problem, if you want to improve the article please try to make it look professional, and the most important is to resist the desire to accumulate garbage and irrelevant information. It takes time to go and collect full reference data like doi, page numbers and titles, but if you do this, you will have also the chance to actually read what you are citing. unfortunately many people read only the title and think they should not bother to check the article content, because they presume already have the knowledge to guess the content from the title. So this is how Hameroff fantasized his "dendritic lamellar bodies" as Josephson junctions with coupled mitochondrion for delivering electrons, and anchored gap junctions! Instead, De Zeeuw et al said many times in their article that the dendritic lamellar bodies are only stained by antibody for gap junctions but have no structural link to gap junctions, and they made this precaution again and again in their text, provided that someone bothers to read the text .. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 02:34, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the templates. Unfortunately, I can do nothing at present with the main reference section, which is the work of another editor. On the edit page, the reference section is condensed into something involving rewferences and arrows and a slash that cannot be reproduced on this page and cannot be accessed on the edit page. I've tried putting in new material separately but that is garbled when saved. I've removed the last para about Hameroff's tests as it doesn't fit very well in this section. Of course, the reference should have been to [21] not [20]. I have also slightly altered the reference to Tegmark to emphasise that he is discussing the duration rather than the actual existence of quantum states.Persephone19 (talk) 17:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I continue, saving and signing more often than necessary due to another Wikipedia dysfunction in tending to lose longer edits. With the 'Other Relevant Papers'. I have deleted some of the older imaging papers, but wonder if you are not a bit hasty relative to the photosynthesis material. As the name implies the system starts by harvesting light, but Engels paper looks to make it clear that the coherence refers to electrons within the protein, and that light is just the initial excitation of the system. He also seems to propose some form of quantum computation within the system. Here I actually have the more or less full reference, which is 'Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems', Gregory S. Engel et al, Nature, 446, 782-786 (12 April 2007) doi:10.1038/nature05678.Persephone19 (talk) 17:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Various quotes from the Engel paper might give the general drift.

'electronic energy transfer involving oscillatory populations of donors and acceptors.'

'direct evidence for remarkably long-lived electronic quantum coherence playing an important part in energy transfer.'

'...oscillations caused by electronic coherence .... Such quantum coherence, a coherent superposition of electronic states ... is formed when the system is initially excited by a short wave pulse ...'

'... theoretical models indicate that electronic coherence should dephase ... in less than 250 fs ... The strong quantum beating that we observe to last for at least 660 fs clearly exceeds the model predictions .... the protein must have a more active role in a realistic bath model; that it must be allowed to interact with both donors and acceptors, to enable coherence transfer ....'Persephone19 (talk) 17:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

quote continues: 'When viewed in this way, the system is performing a single quantum computation, sesning many states simultaneously and selecting the correct answer, as indicated by the efficiency of energy transfer .... such an operation is analogous to Grover's algorithm, with the Hamiltonian describing both relaxation to the lowest energy state and coherence transfer ... such a scheme could provide efficiency beyond that of a classical search algorithm.'

Maybe some of your own criticisms of Orch-OR should go into the 'objections' section, notably the lammelar bodies, the number of tubulins and your 2006 remark about only involving dendrites and not axons, despite the probablistic firing of synapses. The last has puzzled others that I have corresponded with.Persephone19 (talk) 17:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Dear Persephone, could you please give me some contact information to send you the photosynthetic paper by Engel by e-mail. You can find my yahoo or gmail e-mail from any preprint that I have posted (nickname is the same for both accounts), see for example the Nature preceedings one. I have worked on Orch OR since 2002, and I can assure you my conclusions are thought and re-thought thousands of times. I have started from the naive position that Orch OR is the best theory there is, but later I cured my naiveness by studying more and more QM theory. So, let us put aside my work, and focus on Engels one:

Surprisingly, the quantum beating lasts for 660 fs. This observation contrasts with the general assumption that the coherences responsible for such oscillations are destroyed very rapidly, and that population relaxation proceeds with complete destruction of coherence (so that the transfer of electronic coherence between excitons during relaxation is usually ignored). From: Engel, G. S., T. R. Calhoun, E. L. Read, T.-K. Ahn, T. Mancal, Y.-C. Cheng, R. E. Blankenship, and G. R. Fleming (2007), Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems, Nature, 446(7137), 782-786.

Compare this result of 0.66 picoseconds with Tegmark's estimate of 0.1 picosecond for Orch OR. These are in the same order of magnitude of 10^-13. Hameroff at many places shows complete lack of understanding of physics, and citing Engel paper is equivalent to cite tegmark's paper as evidence for Orch OR. The logic is: quantum coherence exists and tegmark proves it. The correct question is: yes, quantum coherence exists but for how long? So from 2002 I was thinking that Hameroff might be wrong only in matter concerning physics, but later I have noticed that he cited neuroscience papers without reading them, and making amazing errors. The examples are the Yu and Baas 1994 article, misquoted dozens of times, as well as De Zeeuw, C. I., E. L. Hertzberg, and E. Mugnaini (1995), The dendritic lamellar body: a new neuronal organelle putatively associated with dendrodendritic gap junctions, J. Neurosci., Feb 1995; 15: 1587-1604. Reading only the title you will be misled like Hameroff that DLB has something to do with dendro-dendritic gap junctions. But reading the paper and the caption of Figure 14 says it all: "The bulbous appendage with the DLB does not contain a gap junction while the dendritic spine originating from that dendrite does. Note also that the appendage with the DLB does not contain any microtubules or neurofilaments, whereas the dendrite that gives rise to this appendage does contain these neuronal elements." From: De Zeeuw et al., 1995. These are far from trivial biological mistakes - they are gross forgery. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 01:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have added your objections re: the lammelar bodies and the number of tubulins to the same (last para) as the Reimer paper. I have also mentioned that Engel claims coherence on the femto second scale in contrast to 25 ms in Orch OR. I have added your 2009 paper and De Zeeuw 1995 to the list of relevant papers.

I don't think it's probably appropriate to put it in the article but my take on the significance of the Engel's paper is not that quantum states exist or that they persist for any particular length of time, but that they are functional for the transfer of energy within protein. Really, I've never taken Hameroff's part of the theory as more than an interesting shot at a mechanism, coming after Penrose (1989), who had effectively no idea how quantum consciousness could be implemented in the brain. I think I would start to believe in divine intervention if an anaesthetist with no particularly large research budget hit on a correct mechanism for quantum consciousness at the first go. The direct linking of the proposed coherence time to the 40 Hz synchrony has rather hobbled Orch OR, because almost everyone agrees that 25 ms is ambitious for sustained coherence. I think you said in 2006 you were trying to develop your own quantum consciousness theory and femto second coherence might look like a more plausible basis. Functionalist and similar theories of consciousness have more or less managed to censor out quantum theories in recent years, but if any thing mainstream theories have even less explanatory value than in the 1990s, having fallen back on looking for correlates of consciousness, while reports from AI suggest that the search for an algorithm for perception has been quietly abandoned.Persephone19 (talk) 13:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi again. In regards to what you said on the dynamic timescale of quantum coherent processes actually Jibu & Yasue in 1993-1995 proposed super-radiance and water lasing, which occur at 10 femtosecond timescale - 10^-14 s. This was not accepted at the time for various reasons, and I will not discuss them here, since it is Orch OR discussion page. In regards to gap junctions and gamma synchrony, actually　this is already accepted and there is evidence accumulated. Moreover, since my current project is investigating a particular subset of GABA neurons in the cerebral cortex called parvalbumin positive (PV+) interneurons, I am aware of the fact that these PV+ GABA neurons are essential in generating the gamma oscillations through feedback inhibition upon the pyramidal neurons (cf. Sohal VS, Zhang F, Yizhar O, Deisseroth K. Parvalbumin neurons and gamma rhythms enhance cortical circuit performance. Nature 2009; 459(7247): 698-702). Also it is the gap junctions between GABA interneurons that do what Hameroff attributes to pyramidal gap junctions (the gamma oscillations) (cf. Traub RD, Kopell N, Bibbig A, Buhl EH, LeBeau FE, Whittington MA. Gap junctions between interneuron dendrites can enhance synchrony of gamma oscillations in distributed networks. J Neurosci 2001;21(23):9478-9486.) So I think you better delete all references to gap junctions, or at least input full titles, doi, etc., and comments why this is necessary for Orch OR, and possibly brief explanation that Hameroff extrapolates between different neuronal subtypes - inhibitory (GABA) interneurons vs. pyramidal excitatory (Glu) neurons. I have not checked in great details all biological claims done by Hameroff, but there are few concerning MTs, which are known to be false. For example stable MTs do not have GTP->GDP->GTP cycles, and moreover a critical statement for the MT performed quantum error correction based on Fibonacci series and A microtubule lattice is false - all microtubules in vivo have B lattice and seam! cf. Kikkawa M, Ishikawa T, Nakata T, Wakabayashi T, Hirokawa N. Direct visualization of the microtubule lattice seam both in vitro and in vivo. J Cell Biol 1994;127(6 Pt 2):1965-1971. and Kikkawa M, Metlagel Z.A molecular "zipper" for microtubules. Cell 2006;127(7):1302-1304. So if we are to be correct - one of the Hameroff's 20 testable predictions has been disproved 2 years before Hameroff comes up with his list of 20 predictions in 1996! And this is quite interesting fact, because Hameroff continues to point out how Fibonacci series, topological quantum error correction and other fancy stuff like the MT A lattice can help the Orch OR. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 13:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ohh, and to add my favourite example: in 2003 I have pointed out the Nobel Prize discoveries by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga on split brain subjects. Surgeon cuts the corpus callosum (axons that go from one cerebral hemisphere to the other) and miraculously you have two separate humans - two separate minds! This is not a funny stuff, this is a nightmare - if you have seen this House M.D. episode maybe you have got idea what I am talking about. And thus a critical and most *ugly* part in Orch OR is proven false - axons do participate in the cognitive binding of the human psyche, while Hameroff says that dendro-dendritic gap junctions are creating the mind, but axons are purely classical objects. And surprizingly for me in the recent J. Biol. Phys. article Hameroff did not cite my work and critique at all, but proposed that dendrites extend in corpus callosum, so that via dendro-dendritic gap junctions unite both hemispheres. This is extremely crazy idea, not to mention that there are axo-axonic gap junctions already known to exist - why are necessary exactly dendrites and dendro-dendritic gap juctions?? Also current neuroscience is so advanced, so that such a simple claim has been disproved by thousands of observations. Simply corpus callosum contains mielynated axons, and dendrites are non-myelinated in the cerebral cortex. How will non-myelinated dendrite communicate via gap junction to the other hemisphere cantimeters away. Myelin prevents the exponential decay of the current, moreover the axon boosts the signal via nonlinearity as described in the Hodgkin-Huxley eq. A dendrite cannot transmit the signal so far way in cantimeters and I already have published that the space constant of a dendrite (see cable equation in neurons) is approximately 350 micrometers - at this distance the electric current fades 2.72 times. One can calculate for himself what will happen with the dendritic current till it reach the opposite hemisphere. p.s. Dendrite can be stained for MAP2 and years ago people have tested whether corpus callosum has dendrites or not. I have no time to search for a reference, but I bet one can find dozens of papers disproving Hameroff's 2009 idea. p.s. 2 - the ugly part in Orch OR mentioned above is this - in Orch OR the neuron is cut in two halves - dendrites are conscious, while axons are not conscious, plus in the consciousness enter glial cells. In conventional views glial cells are supportive and trophic, but do not process the sensory information, so they are out of the conscious mind. Instead the whole neuron is conscious both his dendrites and axons. Hameroff says he increases the computational power of the brain - but this is bogus - why then decreasing the computational power by excluding axonal microtubules? Moreover, why not increase the computational power by inputing other cell types like endothelial cells and blood cells, which are present in the vascular system of the brain and deliver the oxygen. These cells do not input sensory info similarly to glial cells but for the Orch OR purpose they have microtubules. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 14:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have further added mentions of the inhibitory neurons, the ignored axons, and A lattice/quantum error correction. I don't think we can just remove gap junctions as they are a core part of the theory, and the job of the articles is to describe the theory right or wrong, and merely note the objections. I can't do much more about the references without some handle on what's happened to the technology there. I think, with a lay orientated article like this, there has to be a limit on the number of technical objections, and we've made the point that there are plenty of technical queries. The typical reader of this sort of thing seems to be somebody who has heard this mentioned at a dinner party and Googles it. Given that I think we should move towards deciding on neutrality. In the meantime, I have had a possibly pseudo-scientific thought that the difference between the predicted 250 fs to decoherence and the actual 660 fs in the Engel study represents the difference between normal decoherence and objective reduction.Persephone19 (talk) 16:27, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I will try to help you with some of the references, and comment them for you. Also I did NOT say to remove material to gap junctions, I said that you should remove the references to papers cited by Hameroff if they are in supporting fashion. Orch OR is a sci-fi extension of ordinary molecular biology, and to cite recognized journals and authors in support of Orch OR is wrong. For example someone may decide to make perpetuum mobile and prove all the standard physics is wrong, but he claim his work is the extension of some Nobel laureates in physics and cites them. So, there is big difference now if one cites this Nobel works in support of the perpetuum mobile device. Anyway, I can help with comments and if I am misunderstood I will clarify. What about the OR in the photosynthesis machinery, you had a good initial thought but you should after test it mathematically. For example, you can use Penrose formula E=\hbar T^{-1}, and then you can calculate the gravitational self-energy of the exciton in the protein, and compare. I think that its gravitational energy will be very tiny, far beyond 1 energy quantum, so Penroses formula will be satisfied not for 0.66 ps, but for millions of years. Penrose must have calculated the lifetime of electron somewhere so the exciton lifetime might be close. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 01:04, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we should make a move towards agreeing the neutrality of this article. I have made a further alteration to the the text of the 'objections' section, removing Hameroff's riposte to Reimer et al, as it hasn't been peer reviewed, and is only on his web site. I haven't mastered the reference technology, as the previous list seemed to be locked against any alteration. I have substituted a limited list of only 13 references written in on an ad hoc basis with square brackets in the text. The 'other relevant papers section has been removed altogether, although about three of the papers have been put into references.Persephone19 (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates

Dear Persephone, please take a few minutes to study how to properly edit citations in Wikipedia. I think the good and professional outlook of the artile depends on its formating and it reveals the competence of the editor also. If you cannot provide even a correct citation to necessary reference it usually reveals that you have no idea about the reference itself, but you have just copy-pasted from somewhere else. No offenses here, I try to help, and if you think my post is irrelevant, just ignore it!!! Anyway, the citations and reference section is NOT locked. Each citation appears as a code in its relevant section. To identify where is the first appearance of a citation you can click on the small blue arrow (triangle) in the Reference section (when the page is viewed from the browser). THEN YOU CLICK > EDIT THE SECTION. THEN SEE THE SOURCE CODE. The source code of a reference it looks like this (check also Wikipedia:Citation templates)

<ref name="xxx">

{{cite journal

| author =

| title =

| journal =

| volume =

| issue =

| pages =

| year =

| url =

| doi =

}}</ref>

When you cite the same citation for second time in the text you usually do not have to write it again, but use only the ref name

<ref name="xxx"></ref>

In my examples you substitute xxx in "xxx" with the name of reference e.g. authoryear. That is all you have to know, the References are then generated by the code and you cannot edit the References section. To change a reference you should edit the reference template itself at the place where it appears for first place. Also do not damage the template outlook. In the source code it is easy to find a template if it is structured on several lines, as shown here. If you do it on a single line, you just mess up the template and it is not easily recognizable by human editor where is the year, where is the title etc. Also the source code is not what one sees in the browser - so you should not have to make the source code look nice. It must be easily editable, that is why I advice you not to collapse the template into single line, but it keep it as it is. Please copy paste the empty template and then paste the relevant fields for each reference after the = signs. Regards, p.s. I had to turn off the Wiki code conversion with nowiki tags that is why I had so many revisions of my post Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 15:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

One more thing, in order to cite again an article already in the Reference section, please check the reference name in the source code. Usually I have titled them authoryear like this <ref name="Tegmark2000"></ref>, however for two authors I used both of them, for 3 authors only the first of them. So check before citing. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I haven't had time to look at this reference problem until today. I'm not sure what the situation is now. Someone seems to have put in references using more or less the template you suggest, but it looks as if some of the old references may have come back. Perhaps I could have your view on this.Persephone19 (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I used the template and have repaired all references in the article. If you click on the article "history" tab you will see that the someone who used the reference templates is me. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 13:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, thank you for doing that. I had been busy, but was intending to have a go at the references on 5 December. However, that now brings us to the question of whether any more changes are needed for the article to give a fairly balanced view of what the theory is proposing. Perhaps you can let me know your thoughts on that.Persephone19 (talk) 17:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Danko, hallo, are you still out there. I'd really like to agree the neutrality, balance etc of this article. I leave it now to the beginning of February, but hope to hear your comments. Persephone19 (talk) 13:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, if you don't like the tags, you can remove them. However the text in the main article on Orch OR does not contain actual information on details of Orch-OR, and is written with stress on un-important things. On your home page you criticized me that I say Hameroff said that axons are non-conscious, while dendrites are conscious, but you could not find such a claim. My reply is that in virtually every article appears the claim, formulated in various ways with the same meaning. For example, in: Hameroff S (1997) Quantum computing in microtubules - an intraneural correlate of consciousness? Cognitive Studies 4: 67-92, you can find "Consciousness may occur primarily in dendritic-dendritic processing, with axonal firing supporting automatic, nonconscious activities." Also in my critical analysis from 2003 here I have explained why Hameroff's dendro-dentritic cognitive binding of exprience is inconsistent with split-brain data, for which Nobel Prizes were received. Curiously in 2009 Hameroff published article in which he proposed dendrites go through corpus calosum to the opposite hemisphere or to the thalamus. This is ridiculous, because axons already go there and axons also have gap junctions. The difference is that axons are myelinated, so the electric current can go without delay to the opposite hemisphere, and moreover, the possible decay is antagonized by supply of energy - this is the essence of the axonal spike. In cotrast dendritic currents decay according to the cable equation (dendritic space constant is ~ 0.3 mm and represents the length at which the voltage drops e=2.72 .. times, calculate yourself that for 10 space constants away, the voltage will drop e^10 ~ 22166 times from the original), and therefore cannot go to the opposite hemisphere through dendrite. Also there are known exceptions for dendrites, in so called hot spots, where dendrites themselves can have spikes [that is nonlinear activities resembling the action potentials in axons]. Therefore the more you learn about molecular neuroscience, the more bizarre look Hameroff's constructions (imagination). In contrast the split-brain data is clear and convincing, cut the axons, and you split the psyche (that is you split the human mind into two separate minds). I have explained in some detail only one point, but there are numerous other crucial points to be addressed. Instead the article contains layman's description of Bose-Einstein condensates, which I think is rather misleading, and is full of possible gel-sol shieldings, etc., which are not ocurring in reality, or if they occur they happen with destruction of the cytoskeleton and liquifying of actin fibers and destruction of microtubules. So I don't know how this can fit in Orch OR scheme at all. Please go ahead and modify the tags or the article as you like. I am busy, and what I did is to show you how to insert citation templates properly, and to give you example that you should read only articles and then update the wikipedia entry, and not read what someone said in blogs (here I also mean Hameroff's own web page, which is nothing but personal blog). moreover, none of Hameroff's references to other people's work is trustable. Hameroff says that somebody said something, but direct check shows serious goofs. i have proved this at least a couple of times, particularly two direct verifications of mis-quoting and mis-understanding - two papers by De Zeeuw, and the Yu & Baas article. If you read my latest article on microtubule biology in NeuroQuantology, you will see that Orch OR is based on sci-fi microtubules, and not on microtubules that are found in nature :-)) Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 04:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I have removed the boiler plates following your last posting. I would like to say that I am grateful for your help particularly with the reference system. I have added a sentence or two at the end of the 'reply to Tegmark' paragraph mentioning alternative schemes for processing in microtubules, which is probably as far as one can go in an article of this kind. If you are less busy sometime, you might like to suggest an alternative wording to describe Bose-Einstein condensates. The problem with the sol-gel shielding is that it is definitely part of the theory that the article is supposed to describe. One could put in a balancing objection, but as of now I have not sufficiently grasped the issue of the destruction of the cytoskeleton to write anything on it. Persephone19 (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me, but as far as I know electrons are fermions, and fermions are subject to Pauli's exclusion principle, so they can't form Bose-Einstein condensates. Since I haven't read Hameroffs' papers I suppose the error was made in the interpretation of these papers. CGR710

Under the conditions of a Bose-Einstein condensate fermions such as electrons combine into Cooper pairs or molecules that have the properties of bosons, and this seems to account for a lot of the characteristics of the condensates. If you scroll down to the 'Current research' section of the Wikipedia srticle you can see this feature described there. That said more recent material from Hammerof/Penrose suggests that they are no longer looking for an actual Bose-Einstein condensate, but for coherence/entanglement of pi electrons on a macroscopic scale that would have some of the same characteristics they identified in the condensates. Persephone19 (talk) 15:57, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Pi electrons

"These pockets contain atoms with electrons called π electrons, which are electrons in the reactive outer shell of the atom that are not bonded to other atoms" is wrong! Particularly pi electrons are bonded to other atoms, because they participate in pi-bonds. As in my previous edits, I will provide wiki-link to pi electrons, and delete popular and misleading explanation, which is chemically wrong. By the way, I checked Hameroff's chapter "That is life!" and i could not find claim that these are not bonded. The description of Van der Waals forces is something different and explains how one can induce dipole. Also the taxol-binding hydrophobic pockets were actually 8 nm away, and the tryptophans that are separated 2 nm away do not form pockets, just represent nonpolar region within the tubulin. These are not small details, especially for someone who cares about chemistry. Danko Georgiev MD (talk) 00:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Again, thanks for correcting these errors. Persephone19 (talk) 16:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hameroff's answer

Hameroff has answered some of the more recent criticism about Orch-or reported in the article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXFFbxoHp3s (from 13:40)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ngherappa (talk • contribs) 18:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I have checked Hameroff's video. It contains numerous factual errors concerning the molecular biology. Here is just one example that surprized me a lot:

5:02 - 5:57 Hameroff: "Now, the TAU protein which is thought previously just to kind of hold microtubules together, turns out that it does something more. It acts as a kind of a traffic signal for motor proteins, which transport synaptic materials. So if a synapse downstream in a DENDRITE, say needs a particular enzyme or precursor or receptor, it's often synthesized more proximally and transported by these motor proteins, which carry it along as cargo and they often have to jump tracks and switch microtubules in a BRANCHING DENDRITE. It's been a mystery how they seem know where to go. It turns out that TAU protein at specific locations on the microtubule are kind of traffic signals, and tell particular proteins like this guy right here, where to jump off. And so, their placement is critical. Now, how do they know where to be? Is there something? Are they that smart or there is some kind of encoding in the microtubule itself?"

The problem is that TAU protein is a microtubule-associated protein that is found only in axons. It is a standard technique to use TAU protein staining in order to label the axons, and to use MAP2 staining in order to label the dendrites of the neuron. How TAU protein goes to dendrites is a mystery to me. At least he should have read the Wikipedia article TAU protein. The article is not written by me and says clearly "Tau is not present in dendrites and is active primarily in the distal portions of axons". As usual, Hameroff just "invents/imagines some stuff" as in a Sci-Fi novel in order to make the story go. It would be OK if he does not understand mathematics or physics and creates Sci-Fi scenarios when he talks about quantum mechanics, but as a medical doctor at least he should have studied in greater details the biology. In summary, Hameroff's talk is pseudo-science using imagined biological pseudo-facts. Danko Georgiev (talk) 08:00, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I propose deletion/modification of this text in the article: "However, Hameroff responded to these criticisms as part of the Google Tech Talk exploring Quantum Biology" . Of course, he can respond even with writing a Sci-Fi novel, but there is nothing notable or academic about this. Talks and videos can be posted in YouTube by everyone, and Hameroff's video would be notable if those who criticized Hameroff have withdrawn their criticism after hearing Hameroff's arguments, or some independent experts have assessed Hameroff's video and concluded that it is really a scientific update of his Orch OR. The example given by me from his talk, clearly shows the opposite, Hameroff just invents/imagines another tale story that has been disproved long time ago. Check the classic article by KS Kosik and EA Finch, 1987 in Journal of Neuroscience. Danko Georgiev (talk) 08:22, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Let's talk of modification here. My main concern at the moment is that the new edit leaves this article ending on a triumphalist pro-Orch OR note, with rather unqualified support for the videos and papers mentioned. At least two sections in this article end in favour of the sceptics on rather the same triumphalist note. Given the violent prejudice against Penrose in particular and quantum consciousness in general that pervades much of Wikipedia, it's possible to live with that, while more exactly complying with Wikipedia neutrality guidance in respect of material that appears supportive to Orch OR.

I'm prepared to accept that Hameroff got it wrong about the tau protein, but the video and similar material in the probably peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology does constitute a restatement of the Orch-OR theory so it's not unreasonable to include something about it. Basically, I think something about the material referred to in the new four line final paragraph should be integrated into the original end part of the article.

In the first instance, Hameroff retracts from the original idea of a Bose-Einstein condensate existing within the microtubules. He is now merely looking for a Frohlich condensate as proposed back in the last century. This is a synchronised oscillation that can be either classical or quantum. The earlier para referring to Bose Einstein condensates should be amended to reflect this change of position.

This has a bearing on the material mentioned in the new para at the end of the article. The new para seems to refer to two papers both involving McKemmish, L., and Reimers, R. Between them these two papers made three main points against Orch OR. The first is the claim (Reimers et al, 2009) that microtubules can only support weak 8 MHz coherence but that Orch OR requires a higher rate of coherence. However, Reimers used a one dimensional model. Against this Hameroff quotes Samsonovich (1992) as sing a two dimensional model which produce Frohlich oscillations. Bandyopadhyay (2011) claims experimental evidence for stronger Frohlich oscillations in microtubules.

The second claim in McKemmish et al (2009) is that aromatic molecules cannot switch between states because their pi electrons are delocalised. Hameroff counters this by claiming he is referring to two or more electron clouds and that switching can occur between these.

McKemmish et al claims that changes in tubulin conformations driven by GTP conversion would throw up a prohibitive energy requirement. Hameroff concedes this point and says that he was previously mistaken in suggesting a change of conformation in the protein. He claims that all that is required is switching in electron cloud dipole states. Dendritic microtubules are in any case claimed to be more stable than other microtubules and therefore not involve GTP activity

I don't claim to be competent to decide between the positions of Hameroff and the others so I throw this open to other comments. Subject to this I would suggest we integrate something that attempts to give both sides of this debate. Also the final para could probably be reorganised just for clarity Persephone19 (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Dear Persephone19, I agree that the article must be neutral and that it cannot evolve infinitely long in the form of replies and counter-replies by Hameroff. I will here briefly comment on several portions of your post above.

1. "similar material in the probably peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology does constitute a restatement of the Orch OR theory" check here! Hameroff's article in the journal of cosmology is hardly peer-reviewed, because Penrose and Hameroff are the Guest Editors of the volume. In other words the guest editor decides who and what will be published in their volume.

2. "In the first instance, Hameroff retracts from the original idea of a Bose-Einstein condensate.." this is NOT done by Hameroff based on an UPDATE of his theory! Rather, McKemmish did not disprove the model for all possible frequencies. Hameroff's reply is essentially "The God of the gaps argument". Here I have in mind the debate between atheists and theists on the Intelligent Design and existence of God. For, example if the science has no explanation for something (i.e. there is a gap), theists immediately say that this is evidence for existence of God who explains this gap! However, when this gap in science is filled, theists go and find another gap in the current science to form similar gap argument, and so on infinitely... Hameroff did exactly the same. McKemmish left a gap at say frequencies of 8 MHz, and Hameroff agreed - ok, McKemmish did not disprove Orch OR for 8 MHz, then Orch OR is perfectly fine!! Hameroff reply is not science, because he readily went for the gap. I think for a working scientist, it is immediately clear that Hameroff's reply is not to be classified in any way as "update". This is solely "retreat to the gap" argument without any reason to explain why 8MHz is better than previous Orch OR proposal. If the previous Orch OR proposal based on some "argumentation" by Hameroff was wrong, then why should I trust any "new argument" proposed by Hameroff that justifies the 8 MHz?? In Popper's terms Orch OR has been falsified, and Hameroff is immunizing Orch OR a posteriori. According to Popper's demarcation criterion, such a posteriori immunization is pseudo-scientific action.

3. "Hameroff concedes this point and says that he was previously mistaken in suggesting a change of conformation in the protein. He claims that all that is required is switching in electron cloud dipole states". Well, this statement is the possibly worse thing of all to do by Hameroff. Even if there is no conformational change there can be huge difference in the energies of the two dipole states and this can require huge supply of energy. I therefore got the impression that Hameroff is mislead to think that if there is no conformational change, then there is no requirement to put energy in Orch OR to do the computation. In other words, the problem pointed by McKemmish and also Georgiev in NeuroQuantology 7 (4): 538–547. is that GTP cannot supply energy to microtubules, NOT that there is/isn't conformational change. If, the two states |0> and |1> have different energies then OrchOR needs energy and Hameroff must explain from where the energy comes if not from GTP? To summarize, the problem is not the conformational change, the problem is that the computation needs energy! See Hameroff's video at time 25:47. If there is electric field in the tubulin cartoon shown by Hameroff from say left to right (and there is E-field in the real tubulin in some direction), then the electric dipole cannot switch its orientation against the E-field without paying energy! Therefore, Hameroff does not understand at all where the problem with Orch OR computation is, has no idea about the fact that computation requires energy [Georgiev in NeuroQuantology 7 (4): 538–547.] and goes for "updated" Orch OR without conformational tubulin changes as if this answers McKemmish and also Georgiev criticism, which is "GTP does not provide the energy for computation in microtubules". Hameroff, said in his video response that "McKemmish miss the boat completely", but after seeing Hameroff's video response and "update" I conclude that it is Hameroff who missed the boat completely. Danko Georgiev (talk) 02:46, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I wanted to add that the text in the main article saying "McKemmish et al and showed that their conclusions were based on an inacurrate understanding of the Penrose-Hameroff proposal" is erroneous. Hameroff completely "reshaped" the original Orch OR into the 8 MHz proposal or whatever it can be called. Everything said in the Hameroff lecture is newly invented/imagined/created after Hameroff read the McKemmish paper. Therefore McKemmish cannot be blamed for "inacurrate understanding" of something that was invented by Hameroff after they published their paper. Instead McKemmish et al. very well describe the original Orch OR with the GTP pumping, tubulin curvature conformations, etc. and this original model of Hameroff-Penrose Orch is also described in my article NeuroQuantology 2009; 7 (4): 538–547.Danko Georgiev (talk) 11:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I have found this quite a struggle, to bring the conflicting stuff together. I am putting here on the talk page some suggested modifications for the article. Firstly, I think we should say that he has abandoned Bose Einstein as this is now the theory as it stands. Secondly I think we could update a bit by mentioning work by researrchers at Innsbruck, Ulm and Bristol, which may lead to tests that could falsify the idea of non-trivial quantum activity in brain proteins. More difficult is Reimers, McKemmish and Hameroff's reply. I have simply tried to give their main points and Hameroff's replies with the caveat that his replies are not independently peer reviewed. Finally I have tried to slightly reorganise the final paragraph. Perhaps you could comment on or modify the sections below.

4th para of 'the creation of the Orch-OR model

Hameroff's suggests that this is supported by Frohlich condensation which is a coherent oscillation of dipolar biomolecules. This oscillation was originally suggested to be a Bose-Einstein condensate, but in the most recent version of his theory (ref) he favours a classical oscillation.

Ist para of section headed 'Criticism'

A recent paper by Engel et al in Nature does indicate quantum coherent electrons as being functional in energy transfer within photosynthetic organisms. Papers by Guerreschi, G., Cia, J. Popescu, S and Briegel H. (refs) are looking to improve their model of entanglement in order to test for the existence of quantum entanglement in protein, a test which could falsify theories of non-trivial coherence or entanglement in brains. The quantum coherence observed by Engel et al lasts for 660 fs rather than the 25ms required by Orch-OR, and is thus compatible with Tegmark's calculations

Last two paras of the article

A number of other criticisms have come to the fore over the years. Papers by Georgiev, D. point to a number of problems with Hameroff's proposals, including a lack of explanation for the probabilistic firing of axonal synapses, an error in the calculated number of tubulin dimers per cortical neuron, and mismodeling of dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs) discovered by De Zeeuw et al, who showed that that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions. Further the hypothesis by Hameroff that cortical dendrites would be shown to contain mainly A-lattice microtubules was experimentally disproved by Kikkawa et al (1994) who showed that all in vivo microtubules have a B lattice and a seam.

Recently the debate has focused round a paper by Reimers et al published in PNAS, and a further paper by McKemmish et al (ref) and Hameroff's replies to the same. Hameroff's material is not regarded as independently reviewed in this respect (ref). The Reimer's paper claimed that microtubules could only support 'weak' 8 Mhz coherence, but that the Orch-OR proposals required a higher rate of coherence. Hameroff, however, claims that 8 Mhz coherence is sufficient to support the Orch-OR proposal (ref). McKemmish et al makes two claims; firstly that aromatic molecules cannot switch states because they are delocalised. Hameroff, however, claims that he is referring to the behaviour of two or more electron clouds (ref); secondly McKemmish shows that changes in tubulin conformation driven by GTP conversion would result in a prohibitive energy requirement. Against this Hameroff claims that all that is required is switching in electron cloud dipole states produced by London forces. Persephone19 (talk) 23:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Dear Persephone19, I am a little bit confused about your proposal. Could you clarify what kind of structure you have in mind for the Orch OR article as a whole? Orch OR has never been formulated as a neat model with all basic statements in it being "fixed" so that one can check them "yes or no" and move on. Under criticism, it is usual practice for Hameroff to complain that he has been misunderstood and then to change everything in Orch OR by introducing new definitions called "update(s)". The last example is written in your post - Hameroff concedes Bose-Einstein condensation and goes for "weak condensate" without understanding what this "weak condensate" means, but just because Reimers et al. said so, or more correctly because Reimers et al. were unable to disprove it. Concerning the possible edit of the main article, I think basic "testable" ideas of Orch OR should be clearly formulated and if disproved they should be described as "tested and disproved". For example, I like the 20 testable predictions by Orch OR listed in 1998, see my post below. Most of these 20 predictions were disproved, and it is over. I think for example that these 20 testable predictions should be listed early in the article on Orch OR, in order for the reader to get some real idea of what is going on e.g. what was the Orch OR in 1998, and where is the Orch OR going in 2012? I hope you will agree that it will be much more reasonable to revise the article by keeping in mind what the whole structure of the article will be. Otherwise it evolves into a series of replies and counter-replies, which looks like blog rather than encyclopedia. Also to show you by example that the whole "update" thing is a farce, let me proudly announce the newest UPDATE of Orch-OR by the team Stuart Hameroff and Deepak Chopra (2012) The "Quantum Soul": A Scientific Hypothesis. In: Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship (Moreira-Almeida A, Santos FS, eds), pp 79-93: Springer. In brief, the soul can diffuse out in the Universe through entanglements and either return to the brain again, or possibly re-incarnate in another body!! Let me note also that Deepak Chopra is Ig Nobel Prize winner for 1998 for his contributions to quantum mechanics. Since Hameroff himself is not ashamed from his collaboration with Chopra, I vote for inclusion of this update in main article too, but after making it clear that the majority of the 20 testable prediction of the Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR were disproved. Danko Georgiev (talk) 10:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Twenty Orch OR testable predictions (1998)

Reference: Hameroff, S.R. (1998). "Quantum Computation In Brain Microtubules? The Penrose-Hameroff "Orch OR" model of consciousness". Philosophical Transactions Royal Society London (A) 356: 1869–1896.

Appendix 2. Testable predictions of the Orch OR model

Neuronal microtubules are directly necessary for consciousness

1. Synaptic sensitivity and plasticity correlate with cytoskeletal architecture/activities in both pre­synaptic and post­synaptic neuronal cytoplasm.

2. Actions of psychoactive drugs including antidepressants involve neuronal microtubules.

3. Neuronal microtubule­stabilizing/protecting drugs may prove useful in Alzheimer's disease, ischemia, and other conditions.

[Comment, D. G., too general and ambiguous to be disproved. "microtubule-­stabilizing/protecting drugs may prove useful in other conditions" is 100% true even without experiment! For Alzheimer's disease and ischemia nobody uses microtubule stabilizing drugs, so disproved!]

Microtubules communicate by cooperative dynamics of tubulin subunits

4. Laser spectroscopy will demonstrate coherent gigaHz Frohlich excitations in microtubules.

[Comment, D. G., this is it - the "strong condensate" prediction! that was disproved by Reimers et al 2009 in PNAS and conceded by Hameroff. How possibly could reimers et al misunderstand hameroff's testable prediction no.4 listed here in clear English? But also see prediction no.9!]

5. Dynamic vibrational states in microtubule networks correlate with cellular activity.

[Comment, D. G., too general, microtubule vibrations could be said to be cellular activity]

6. Stable patterns of microtubule­ cytoskeletal networks (including neurofilaments) and intra­microtubule diversity of tubulin states correlate with memory and neural behavior.

7. Cortical dendrites contain largely "A-­lattice" microtubules (compared to "B­-lattice" microtubule, A­-lattice microtubules are preferable for information processing, Tuszynski et al., 1995)

[Comment, D. G., disproved in 1994 by Kikkawa et al. Obviously Hameroff in 1998 was unaware of this 1994 paper]

Quantum coherence occurs in microtubules

8. Studies similar to the famous "Aspect experiment" in physics (which verified non­local quantum correlations­­Aspect et al., 1982) will demonstrate quantum correlations between spatially separated microtubule subunit states a) on the same microtubule, b) on different microtubules in the same neuron, c) on microtubules in different neurons connected by gap junctions.

9. Experiments with SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) such as those suggested by Leggett (1984) will detect phases of quantum coherence in microtubules.

[Comment, D. G., again - the "strong condensate" prediction! Reimers et al. did with one bullet two birds - no.4 and no.9]

10. Coherent photons will be detected from microtubules.

[Comment, D. G., disproved, Jibu and Yasue have abandoned their work since 1997]

Microtubule quantum coherence requires isolation by cycles of surrounding actin­ gelation

11. Neuronal microtubules in cortical dendrites and other brain areas are intermittently surrounded by tightly cross-linked actin gels.

12. Cycles of gelation and dissolution in neuronal cytoplasm occur concomitantly with membrane electrical activity (e.g. synchronized 40 Hz activities in dendrites).

13. The sol­gel cycles surrounding microtubules are regulated by calcium ions released and reabsorbed by calmodulin associated with microtubules.

[Comment, D. G., typically Hameroff argues that these cycles of sol-gel protect microtubules against decoherence, here the formulation is done in a fashion that it is not clear at all why Orch OR needs these cycles]

Macroscopic quantum coherence occurs among MT in hundreds/thousands of distributed neurons and glia linked by gap junctions

[Comment, D. G., already disproved in 1992!, no evidence for gap junctions between neurons and glia, Binmöller F-J, Müller CM (1992) Postnatal development of dye-coupling among astrocytes in rat visual cortex. Glia 6:127-137.]

14. Electrotonic gap junctions link synchronously firing networks of cortical neurons, and thalamo­cortical networks

15. Quantum tunneling occurs across gap junctions.

16. Quantum correlation occurs between microtubule subunit states in different neurons connected by gap junctions (the microtubule "Aspect experiment" in different neurons)

The amount of neural tissue involved in a conscious event is inversely proportional to the event time by E=hbar/T

17. The amount of neural mass involved in a particular cognitive task or conscious event (as measurable by near­future advances in brain imaging techniques) is inversely proportional to the pre­conscious time (e.g. visual perception, reaction times).

An isolated, unperturbed quantum system self­collapses according to E=hbar/T

18. Isolated technological quantum superpositions will self­collapse according to E=/T. (Preliminary discussions of such experiments involving superposition of crystals have begun between Roger Penrose and Anton Zeilinger.)

Microtubule­based cilia/centriole structures are quantum optical devices

19. Microtubule­based cilia in rods and cones directly detect visual photons and connect with retinal glial cell microtubule via gap junctions.

[Comment, D. G., disproved, for details see Photons Do Collapse In the Retina Not in the Brain Cortex: Evidence from Visual Illusions, NeuroQuantology 2011; 9(2): 206-230.

A critical degree of cytoskeletal assembly (coinciding with the onset of rudimentary consciousness) had significant impact on the rate of evolution.

20. Fossil records and comparison with present­day biology will show that organisms which emerged during the early Cambrian period with onset roughly 540 million years ago had critical degrees of microtubule­cytoskeletal size, complexity and capability for quantum isolation (e.g. tight actin gels, gap junctions; see Hameroff, 1998b).

[Comment, D. G., it is likely that the whole idea of "Cambrian explosion" is a misnomer. See, The Cambrian Explosion. For comparison modern humans evolved from creatures similar to Australopithecus for about 2 million years. And what humans achieved for the last 100 years, to step on the moon, fly probes to Saturn etc., is really "explosion" when compared to say 10-45 millions of years during which the "Cambrian explosion" ocurred.

I hope my notes help. Danko Georgiev (talk) 11:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Danko, --- I wouldn't claim the organisation of the article is anyway perfect, but I think down to the 'Criticism' section it would seem to give a reasonable account of the theory. Firstly we describe Penrose's suggestions re: the Godel theorem and objective reduction. Then we bring in the collaboration with Hameroff who suggested microtubules as a possible site for quantum activity, and from that the idea of a link to the gamma synchrony. One thing that seems to have been forgotten over the years, because of the high profile adopted by Hameroff, is that this is really a Penrose theory. He had an argument for quantum consciousness. Hameroff read this and then came up with a suggestion for a mechanism.

I don't see most of the 20 testable predictions as central to the theory. It looks like that in trying to counter accusations of proposing untestable pseudo-science, Hameroff came up with a complete ragbag of things that might be suggested by quantum activity, but many of which are not really a part of the core theory as such. The theory does appear to require an interaction with drugs, a role in memory, the quantum optical idea, or the speculation about evolution and the Cambrian explosion. Also as I understand it neither the 'A' lattice thing nor coherent photons are a vital requirement. Electrons seem to be the quanta mainly involved.

My real gripe with Hameroff is that he has not engaged much with modern developments in quantum biology or neuroscience. He mentions the work of Engel and others in establishing non-trivial quantum activity in photosynthetic organisms, but he never explores whether the organisation of these has implications for his system. The sol-gel appears amongst the tests, but I think it may now be irrelevant because quantum biology has shown that quantum states can function at room temperatures without elaborating sol-gel proposals. It looks as if Hameroff should be concentrating on quantum error correction, which is what Guerreschi, Cia et al are modelling in the run up to possibly a real test/falsification of Orch-OR. Bear in mind that this may be fundable because of interest in the area relative to energy transmission and computing.

Similarly at Hameroff's own conference in May 2011, Rafael Malach gave an interesting presentation on the correlation between consciousness and activity in single neurons. It seems this might obviate Hameroff's cumbersome requirement to sustain brain wide global gamma synchrony entanglement for 25 ms. Quantum biology has coherence collapsing in hundreds of femtoseconds and entanglement in picoseconds, so 25 ms is a challenge of the serious kind.

I agree with you that the existing and proposed 'Criticism' sections are clunky, but isn't this partly a product of the Wikipedia format. I really don't see the encyclopedia format as that suited to controversial topics, lacking agreed facts or authorities that can be referred to in order to settle disputes. Further there tends to be a need for some degree of reasoned argument and suggestion in order to clarify what is involved, but the format only allows what third parties endowed with official authority have said.

That doesn't really help much. However, I suggest an attempt to integrate the falsification of some of the 20 testable predictions into the 'Creation of the Orch-OR' section as given below, but in reality, I can't see a good alternative to the unfortunate 'blog style'. I'm not keen on giving all the predictions, because I think that for the more casual or less informed reader they would distract from the main arguments of both the theory and its opponents, for the very reason that as you point out a lot of them are not that relevant.

Anyway I provide another shot below:-

Insert as third para from end of 'Creation' section:-

Further to this, in 1998, Hameroff made 20 testable predictions related to his proposal that quantum states function within microtubules . However, some of these have been falsified. The proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing , in neurons, has been falsified by Kikkawa et al, who showed that all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam. The suggestion of coherent photons in microtubules has been falsified, as has the existence of gap junctions between neurons and glia cells, and the proposal that photons do not decohere in the retina.

We could also remove the separate 'Criticisms' heading and run straight on into Tegmark, your criticisms and the debate with Reimers and McKemmish.

Failing this, perhaps you could make suggestions on the ordering of material and I could attempt another write up. Persephone19 (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Dear Persephone19, I agree that Wikipedia "format" as you say is not well suited for controversial topics. Therefore I think you should revise by keeping the current structure and according to your proposal. I will support your text modifications, and if there is something that is bothering, I will post explanation on the talk page. And, yes I agree that Orch-OR does not need a lot of garbage stuff in it, but we are not talking here about how the brain might work, here we are talking about the Hameroff's theory, which is what Hameroff says it is, not what we think is correct. If you agree with this point, please keep in mind that for example the 10 ps version is solely my contribution, and as such cannot be attributed to Hameroff. You cannot just say, "but it is obvious - Tegmark calculated it, why not mind operating at that scale of 10 ps?" Well, it is not that easy. If our thoughts were that fast, why don't you know it from your own experience, i.e. there are 100 million such conscious moments within 1 ms? Why Hamerof sticks to 25 ms? The answer is not only because it is mainstream, but because it feels like we think slowly and when measured how fast we think the time is much slower than 25 ms. When I created the 10 ps model in 2003 I have answered the possible criticisms as well, but this is not Orch OR story. I wrote this digression to show you that it does not matter how the brain works, what matters is Hameroff's version of Orch OR, and also that other researchers that may proved correct results will not agree their results to be attributed to Hameroff. So when you think that something is not essential to Orch OR don't equalize Orch OR with how the brain works and don't borrow arguments from my papers to think how Orch OR may survive the critique. Let me give you one more very clear example. Hameroff Orch OR is claiming consciousness produced by dendrites and glial cells connected by gap junctions. This is non-sense but you wouldn't have thought of it without me pointing it out. Above I cited an experiment (Binmöller F-J, Müller CM (1992) Postnatal development of dye-coupling among astrocytes in rat visual cortex. Glia 6:127-137.) with a dye that goes through gap junctions. So when the dye is injected in 1 glial cell only glial cells are stained by the dye, and not just that, but all glial cells in the neighbourhood without a single neuron with dye. The same happens with injecting dye in 1 neuron - only gap-junction connected neurons get the dye but no glial cells! So, you will say Orch OR does not need this gap junction thing! Sure, but let me continue. I showed that Orch OR violates the split-brain findings about unity of mind. I argued that axons participate in binding the mind and that it is biological non-sense to say that the 1/2 of the neuron is conscious (dendrites) but then the other 1/2 is not conscious (axon). In 2009 Hameroff without citing my criticism at all, published "update of Orch OR" - dendrites go through corpus callosum and form gap junctions with dendrites in the other hemisphere!!!! And sure enough, this should be part of the Hameroff Orch OR because Hameroff said it and published it in his "conscious pilot" article 2009. I hope I have convinced you that the logic what it should be, basic neuroscience and Hameroff's Orch OR are NOT THE SAME THING. With that being clarified, I will support your edits and I will help you with further comments if needed. But you should not cherry pick only things that are not disproved or already trivial part of the basic neuroscience as THE ORCH OR. The Orch OR is the totality of stuff defended and published by Hameroff, so I am for inclusion of that other stuff also. Danko Georgiev (talk) 22:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Danko, See the article for my shot at alterations. I agree it begins to look a bit like an interactive blog with everybody getting their bit of say in, plus the to-and-fro between Hameroff and the others. I don't really know what to do about this as I do not have the stomach for a complete re-write and then everybody would be upset and the whole thing would start all over again, or else we just get an article about Tegmark and nothing else.

I agree that Orch-OR proposals do not constitute science, but it's difficult for the non-expert to disentangle one from the other, as few discuss biology from the point of view of either consciousness or quantum features. As for the speed of collapse and consciousness, I suppose this is not the place to discuss it, but I might think in terms of recurring collapses in single neurons being classically coordinated by the gamma synchrony. Persephone19 (talk) 22:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I do not want to edit myself the article, because one can say my point of view is not impartial. I can support your edits on the talk page only. Danko Georgiev (talk) 07:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Danko, I'm just getting used to all of these topics, but I don't understand why you think that Hameroff mismodelled the DLBs, since, looking at the paper, it seems to match the description, at least to my layman eye. And Orch-OR was never DEPENDENT on it either... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.192.195.236 (talk) 00:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I am answering to the question on DLB posted by anonymous I.P. (side request: Dear anonymous, please open an account!). First check Section 3 here for brief outline. Then check figure 16 and its caption of this article by Hameroff - hint DLB is between the microtubule and gap junction, then see Figure 1 here and try to figure out how possibly Fig 1 fit in Hameroff's sci-fi proposal. Let me also note, that Hameroff is speaking of nanometers for gap junction tunneling, whereas the distance in original DLB sketch by De Zeeuw et al. is of order of 10 micrometers on one side of the gap junction only. To get a real sense of how huge the problem is, let me say it this way - suppose we decide to built a house and use measure units of meters, then suddenly we encounter problem in our architecture that is measured in kilometers :-) I hope this answers the posed question. Danko Georgiev (talk) 12:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Awesome talk page

Persephone and Danko: Thanks for your relentless work from an appreciative (and highly entertained!) reader. Gwideman (talk) 12:51, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

A Small Request...

WingGundam, this issue is more complicated than you think, and neither of us have any final say in it. That said, I think you're misrepresenting the state of affairs right now because of your own views on the subject.

For one, the Gödel-Turing argument has some things going for it. Gödel himself gave a version of it in the Gibbs Lecture, prior to John Lucas, and the argument has been retooled by Selmer Bringsjord and others over the issue of hypercomputation (though Bringsjord's refutation of Penrose's argument is a rather hand-wavy rebuttal to both the Halting Problem and Gödel's Theorems themselves...): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.91.5786&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Penrose has addressed many of the criticisms in the essays "Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow" and "What Gaps? Reply to Grush and Churchland". This is significant because the criticisms of the arguments (Whiteley sentence, unsound system, unknowably huge algorithm for humans) have been amply addressed (in Penrose's writings and those of others: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3751287?uid=3739728&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102539778617, http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3751512?uid=3739728&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102539778617) and mostly ignored.

I've received note that Hameroff has admitted his errors, but it must be said that the model was open-ended and prone to more discoveries being made as time went on. And the Journal of Cosmology was not his response to Reimers and McKemmish. The actual response was presented at the TSC 2010 convention: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/PNAS.htm.

Your citation of Georgiev is rather misleading, since it seems he has his own version of OR as the basis of consciousness in the brain: http://cogprints.org/4463/2/tucson_2003.pdf. On the Quantum Mind talk page, you can find his critique of Hameroff's proposal as well as his critique of Tegmark!

Here's a good summary of the state of the hypothesis, complete with citations of articles that back up the idea: http://www.quantumbionet.org/admin/files/Massimo%20Pregnolato%20-%20Rita%20Pizzi%202011.pdf.

Either give the groups involved a fair shake or delete the article altogether. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 17:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

• "I think you're misrepresenting ... because of your own views on the subject" — stop accusing others of dishonesty and misrepresentation. stop accusing others of bias against you. Jesus Christ, stop making ad hominem attacks. This violates the rule of WP:AGF, and the spirit of editing Wikipedia.

"the Journal of Cosmology was not his response..." — Bear in mind, I didn't write most of this article. But I can remove this citation if it's inappropriate.

[4] is not a reliable source.

[5] is not a reliable source.

[6] is not a reliable source.

"This is significant because the criticisms of the arguments ... have been addressed ... and mostly ignored." — No, they haven't.

We cannot present the Penrose-Lucas argument as if it's accepted, nor as if its criticisms have been satisfactorily addressed, unless you can provide an independent, secondary or tertiary source which states that the philosophical community has accepted his argument. They haven't, so this article documents the argument and prominent criticisms.

"Hameroff has admitted his errors, but ... the model was open-ended and prone to" — a classic symptom of moving the goalposts

"Penrose has addressed many of the criticisms in the essays" — This article must document Orch-OR as viewed by the scientific community in reliable, published literature. We cannot use Penrose's and Hameroff's primary sources for anything beyond basic facts of the theory. In particular, analysis of criticisms and rebuttals of the theory must come from independent, reliable, secondary sources. We cannot use someone's Powerpoint presentation, nor the QuantumConsciousness website, nor the Quantumbionet website. Those are not reliable sources.

In the absence of an independent, reliable analysis of Orch-OR, or broad scientific support for such an ambitious theory, we MUST view it skeptically under WP:FRINGE. And as the SEP states "From a philosophical perspective, their proposal has occasionally received outspoken rejection... [It] represents a highly speculative approach with conceptual problems and without plausible concrete ideas for empirical confirmation."

Instead of spraying unreliable citations, why not post a proposed change/edit here? —wing gundam 00:31, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

• I never accused you of dishonesty against ME. I just have a problem with the fact that you keep calling it "pseudoscience" when it still has a good amount of credibility behind it. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It's the transcript of the presentation he gave at the TSC 2010 conference. You can find the video online if you want. I've also received word from him that the peer-reviewed version will be out this fall, with commentary by Reimers, McKemmish, et al. When it comes out, you can probably post it. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It has links TO reliable sources. That's why I presented it to you. Of course I wasn't going to use it as a source. I was using it as a list of more reliable articles. I am allowed to do that. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Once again, see above. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Er... yeah, they have. Open up Penrose's 1994 book and you'll find pretty much every objection answered in detail. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

There are many who still sympathize with Lucas and Penrose's position. The claims of eliminative materialists have responses on their channel. At least give the responses rather than just the counterarguments. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Er... no. It's an example of a flexible hypothesis. The central argument remains the same. This isn't the same as being ad-hoc. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.124.163.95 (talk)

There are links TO the sources in those papers. Why is "QuantumConsciousness" not reliable? It contains links to all of Hameroff et al.'s papers. The actual papers are presented IN those pages. You can find them with a quick search, and many of them are reliable. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes. "Occasionally received" cannot be emphasized enough. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll propose the changes/edits as soon as the material has been looked at with a closer eye. I don't even buy Orch-OR completely, and I think work needs to be done on this article. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

• Fixed your post, 24.192.195.236. Try not to fuck with other's comments. 165.124.163.95 (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. Bad habit. I usually try to respond to people point-by-point. 24.192.195.236 (talk) 03:02, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I would like to express support for wing gundam. He actually explained well (!) why Orch-OR is viewed as pseudoscience and the article should not be more positive about the merits of Orch-OR, namely, only Hameroff himself and a bunch of people lacking formal training in neuroscience and molecular biology are able to "see" some positive merit in Orch-OR. There are no solid publications by independent researchers (i.e. not Hameroff's co-authors) who evaluated Orch OR in positive terms, so the claim cannot be validated according to Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion of content. And to answer one question posed by 24.192.195.236 - Q: Why is "QuantumConsciousness" not reliable? A: Something called conflict of interest - you don't expect to find on Hameroff's homepage thorough discussion on what qualifies his sci-fi theory as pseudoscience, do you? Danko Georgiev (talk) 12:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

And a minor comment on "Your citation of Georgiev is rather misleading, since it seems he has his own version of OR as the basis of consciousness in the brain". I am supportive of some ideas by Roger Penrose (one of them is the necessity of objective reduction in QM), but I don't see any positive contribution by Hameroff to Penrose's ideas. In contrast, much harm is done, as now many cannot think about Penrose's ideas without somehow mentioning Hameroff's sci-fi stuff somewhere. It should be noted that Penrose's 1989 book was published before he knew Hameroff, and exactly because of the 1989 book Hameroff contacted Penrose and proposed collaboration. Danko Georgiev (talk) 12:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, in that case, why don't you defend Penrose's arguments regarding the Gödel-Turing theorems? 69.14.156.143 (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Did I say that I agree with Penrose's Godelian argument!? Actualy, I have written 2 entries in PlanetMath on the topic: Penrose’s first Gödelian argument and Penrose’s second Gödelian argument. What I said is that I agree with some of Penrose's ideas in his book, but none of Hameroff's ideas. At this point, I don't think I need to write specifically on what points I agree with Penrose. Danko Georgiev (talk) 22:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

A Big Request ... Inclusion of Stuart Hameroff - Deepak Chopra collaboration

Even though some have small requests such as making the Orch-OR article sound more positive, I believe the Orch-OR article misses important content on the so called Orch-OR "updates" done in the past couple of years. I personally would be happy to see a special section on the Hameroff-Chopra collaboration, on the quantum soul diffusing out in the Universe through entanglements after the death, and other such revolutionary insights some of which were reported in Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole. Danko Georgiev (talk) 13:06, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I would definitley second that request. Adding these references to where the bulk of support for Orch-OR lies will likely result in it being seen in the appropriate context. Fisman (talk) 07:47, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Danko, they've responded to the claims of people who have "widely rejected" the idea: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188. 69.14.156.143 (talk) 18:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

And by the way, these speculations on Hameroff's part don't "reveal the true motivation" for Orch-OR. It's just an extension of what's already there. Nothing more. 69.14.156.143 (talk) 18:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

If you include stuff like that it'll definitely make Penrose look like he associates with kooks! :-) 129.132.209.90 (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Corresponding Quantum_mind page section

A note that the section concerning this theory in the Quantum_mind page is marked as slightly troubled reference-wise, and that that section might be going into too much detail considering this page exists for those that want details. Also see that page/section for a link to news about a renewed initiative in 2013/2014 by the theory's authors. (140.232.0.70 (talk) 19:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC))

20 predictions

Well, Hameroff&Penrose have been at it again recently and published a review of their theory including rebuttals by their critics: Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory of Consciousness How much of this news has already been integrated into the article? I am especially interested in these "20 predictions". As written in the wikipedia article here, most of these predictions have already been refuted. However, according to the news article it is claimed that none of the 20 predictions have been refuted, and that, in fact, several of them have been confirmed. I haven't been looking at the bottom of this, but perhaps it would be interesting to list each prediction in table form including the alleged confirmation and refutation. How about that? Fedor (talk) 13:08, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Do you expect Hameroff to admit his predictions were refuted? Did you find somebody else making press conference to say that Orch OR has been amazingly confirmed? I understand well that when a person is interested in something he wants to know more if the topic is worthy or not. I was quite interested in Orch OR in 2002, but my enthusiasm for it has since completely vanished. Everything I tested, starting from the molecular biology of microtubules to mathematical structure of quantum mechanics, contradicts Hameroff's writings. You can find some of my articles in Research Gate to do some reading on the problems of Orch OR, then think for yourself. Danko Georgiev (talk) 14:56, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Ofcourse the theory is not confirmed, as you said. But it has started to receive more attention. Very recently Penrose received a prize for this theory: http://newswise.com/articles/sir-roger-penrose-receives-bhaumik-prize-in-consciousness-research-at-tucson-conference

Of course it is related to the university and residency of Hamerrof, Arizona, but nevertheless, Mr Mani Bhaumik, a UCLA physicist, would certainly have other bushiness to attend to than to award prizes to Englishmen with brain-dead theories.

Danko Georgiev: Casting doubt on Hameroff's motives and intellectual honesty is not a valid argument, but an ad hominem. Why wouldn't we expect Hameroff to admit any mistakes or problems to his theory? You seemed to have decided beforehand that he is some charlatan or at the very least in serious denial. That casts a shadow over everything you claim here. I could easily turn it around: Why would we expect 'you' or any of Hameroff's opponent to admit to making errors? That won't get us very far. Let's focus on the facts instead. Amphioxys (talk) 11:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I added a proposed table below the fold here. The predictions are taken from: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html Fedor (talk) 11:35, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

The review that the article refers to has been directed above. Look for the "sciencedirect" link just above here. In my opinion, I would say that Hameroff is being a little too enthusiastic here, since, while the A-lattice thing isn't that big of an issue, it's probably not true (Kikkawa's 1994 work...). That said, it is looking good, and with the flexibility of the proposal, coupled with recent work on topological quantum computation and Bandyopadhyay's material, the model has been significantly cleaned up, while still retaining its key premises. 69.14.156.143 (talk) 21:25, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

table (work in progress)

Claim	Refutation	Alleged confirmation
Neuronal microtubules are directly necessary for consciousness
1. Synaptic sensitivity and plasticity correlate with cytoskeletal architecture/activities in both pre­synaptic and post­synaptic neuronal cytoplasm.	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce quis malesuada massa, id scelerisque magna. Pellentesque elementum sodales tortor.	Nulla sed lorem sit amet metus lobortis tristique sed in quam. Ut pretium neque eu turpis tempus, sed porttitor odio bibendum. Phasellus auctor sollicitudin faucibus.
2. Actions of psychoactive drugs including antidepressants involve neuronal microtubules.
3. Neuronal microtubule­stabilizing/protecting drugs may prove useful in Alzheimer's disease, ischemia, and other conditions.
Microtubules communicate by cooperative dynamics of tubulin subunits
4. Laser spectroscopy (e.g. Vos et al, 1993) will demonstrate coherent gigaHz Frhlich excitations in microtubules.
5. Dynamic vibrational states in microtubule networks correlate with cellular activity.
6. Stable patterns of microtubule­cytoskeletal networks (including neurofilaments) and intra­microtubule diversity of tubulin states correlate with memory and neural behavior.
7. Cortical dendrites contain largely "A­lattice" microtubules (compared to "B­lattice" microtubule, A­lattice microtubules are preferable for information processingTuszynski et al., 1995)
Quantum coherence occurs in microtubules
8. Studies similar to the famous "Aspect experiment" in physics (which verified non­local quantum correlations­­Aspect et al., 1982) will demonstrate quantum correlations between spatially separated microtubule subunit states a) on the same microtubule, b) on different microtubules in the same neuron, c) on microtubules in different neurons connected by gap junctions.
9. Experiments with SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) such as those suggested by Leggett (1984) will detect phases of quantum coherence in microtubules.
10. Coherent photons will be detected from microtubules.
Microtubule quantum coherence requires isolation by cycles of surrounding actin­gelation
11. Neuronal microtubules in cortical dendrites and other brain areas are intermittently surrounded by tightly cross-linked actin gels.
12. Cycles of gelation and dissolution in neuronal cytoplasm occur concomitantly with membrane electrical activity (e.g. synchronized 40 Hz activities in dendrites).
13. The sol­gel cycles surrounding microtubules are regulated by calcium ions released and reabsorbed by calmodulin associated with microtubules.
Macroscopic quantum coherence occurs among MT in hundreds/thousands of distributed neurons and glia linked by gap junctions
14. Electrotonic gap junctions link synchronously firing networks of cortical neurons, and thalamo­cortical networks
15. Quantum tunneling occurs across gap junctions.
16. Quantum correlation occurs between microtubule subunit states in different neurons connected by gap junctions (the microtubule "Aspect experiment" in different neurons)
The amount of neural tissue involved in a conscious event is inversely proportional to the event time by E=hbar/T
17. The amount of neural mass involved in a particular cognitive task or conscious event (as measurable by near­future advances in brain imaging techniques) is inversely proportional to the pre­conscious time (e.g. visual perception, reaction times).
An isolated, unperturbed quantum system self­collapses according to E=hbar/T
18. Isolated technological quantum superpositions will self­collapse according to E=/T. (Preliminary discussions of such experiments involving superposition of crystals have begun between Roger Penrose and Anton Zeilinger.)
Microtubule­based cilia/centriole structures are quantum optical devices
19. Microtubule­based cilia in rods and cones directly detect visual photons and connect with retinal glial cell microtubule via gap junctions.

Tagged for Cleanup due to "bias/missing rebuttals"

Dear User:109.153.177.43, you recently tagged this article for Cleanup-tagging due to: highly biased, not up-to-date on valid rebuttals from theorists". Would you mind listing the references missing from the rebuttals? Sperxios (talk) 21:08, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Also dear User:86.155.32.46, see the same sentence for your tagging on 1st Feb 2015 edit (oldid=645146501).

Please, refrain from applying invasive edits when not logged-in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.191.4.14 (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

References

Question about the controversy of this topic

Hello, across the internet many people seem very opposed to this topic. I have only read Emperor's New Mind and seen a documentary about the same book by Penrose. However from what I know, Penrose puts forth so many arguments that I am not sure exactly which one/ones people disagree with. From what I understand, Penrose's main point can be surmised this way. Let A be a turing machine, for every decision a person makes throughout their life machine A enumerates said decision and prints it as the decimal expansion of a real number. Penrose argues that no such machine can exist or else we could use it to solve Turing's famous halting problem. Also, according to Penrose, This speaks nothing of approximating the behavior of a human arbitrarily close, only of predicting with certainty the way any specific human will behave arbitrarily far into the future. Because of this, Penrose claims that this implies that some of human thinking must inherently be non-algorithmic. The arguments that Penrose stitches together, to my knowledge, no one would dispute on their own, eg. Turing's proof that the halting problem is unsolvable in the general case, or Cantor's proof that more numbers exist between zero and one than integers. Is it controversial in that these arguments cannot be applied the way that Penrose applies them? It seems to me that most rebuttal's are against his theories of quantum gravity. Quantum Gravity however is a field difficult to be taken seriously in anyway, since, to my knowledge, most physicists believe that nothing can be known at that scale. Most theories I've encountered about quantum gravity make little sense to begin with, so I guess Penrose isn't any different that way. I just wonder if anybody has addressed the other points??2602:304:5964:8F39:18E:C2D3:46AF:FE57 (talk) 20:07, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The claim that "no such machine can exist or else we could use it to solve Turing's famous halting problem" assumes that conscious decisions are undecidable. It's circular reasoning at best. Just because we have not yet successfully predicted every human decision does not mean that it is impossible to do so. Weather is a good analogy. We still cannot predict the weather with absolute certainty -- it is way beyond our computational capability. But that does not mean that the weather is "undecidable". Turning's halting problem is a beautiful proof because it requires no assumptions about what is or is not decidable to make its point. Penrose's argument assumes a decidability character of consciousness that is arguable at best. jps (talk) 12:28, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Microtubule A- or B-lattice

I am sure that the editor who inserted the following text had good intentions, but as I will explain it is completely wrong, so it would be best if editors without degree in molecular biology restrain themselves from editing topics that they do not understand. The text is: "However, the recent research by Anirban Bandyopadhyay showed that microtubules can change their structure from B-lattice to A-lattice as part of the processing of information, and tubulin in microtubules exists in multiple states" So let me explain what is wrong: experiments IN VITRO have clearly shown that B-lattice microtubules can exist, and that microtubles can flip from one lattice to another. Also numerous in vitro studies have shown that microtubules with 12, 14, 15 etc protofilaments (PFs) can form (all in vivo microtubules have 13). Hameroff and Tuszynski were aware of all that published literature and made a guess that what happens in vitro, should happen in vivo as well. It is very difficult to design an experiment to check the status of microtubules IN VIVO, but Kikkawa and colleagues were able to do exactly that - they performed Quick-Freeze Deep-Etching technique, which allowed to check what the structure of microtubules in the brain looks like. If the microtubules were undergoing transitions from A- to B-lattice in vivo, it would be expected that at any given moment in time, there will be some percentage of A-lattice microtubules and some percentage of B-lattice microtubules. After the freezing, the microtubules cannot undergo further transitions, and the ratio of A- to B-lattice microtubules could be determined. What Kikkawa found is that 100% of IN VIVO microtubles have B-lattice. Citing more and more in vitro experiments, done by Anirban Bandyopadhyay or others, is IRRELEVANT. Orch OR prediction has been found to be false in 1994 and the result has been published in one of the premier journals on molecular and cell biology, namely the Journal of Cell Biology. If Hameroff was actually more carefully reading what others published, he would not have done his wrong prediction four years later in 1998! Danko Georgiev (talk) 21:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

It seems that quote is still in the article three years after your objection... 137.101.94.106 (talk) 00:06, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Can we get a better description?

Forgive me, but the text isn't clear how this is suppose to work. Non-computable algorithm? What is that? Microtubules and connective proteins influence or orchestrate the state reduction of the qubits by modifying the spacetime-separation of their superimposed states. Is there a step by step description of what Penrose is talking about? I know a little of quantum physics and quite a bit of inorganic + organic chemistry. For now, the article looks like a lot of quantum jargon. Vmelkon (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The "Non-computable algorithm" I believe is a mistake, and should be replaced by "Non-computable physical procedures" or something along this line. It is exactly the "algorithmic" part of Hard-AI that Penrose had been attacking in his 90s books. Now for a more clear description of the theory, probably you have to resort to the original papers (try the 2013 Elsevier) or secondary articles and videos to get a more precise description; there are plenty in the refs. You may feel that the root-papers are incomplete, but remember that we are still talking about a "theory", a "conjecture". Nevertheless, I believe that eventually you will come to agree that the sentences of the article you mentioned indeed summarize accurately the contents of the papers. In any case, the organization of this page's contents need rework mainly for eliminating redundancy. Sperxios (talk) 12:44, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Weird quote

Another critic, Charles Seife, has said, "Penrose, the Oxford mathematician famous for his work on tiling the plane with various shapes, is one of a handful of scientists who believe that the ephemeral nature of consciousness suggests a quantum process."

I'm not sure what this quote brings at all, so I removed it altogether. What it can bring to the article completely eludes me. If someone finds it insightful, feel free to put it back.217.13.235.58 (talk) 12:55, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Aticle 2015-08-01

[[7]] Quantum Cognition: The possibility of processing with nuclear spins in the brain 1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Matthew P. A. Fisher

(Dated: September 1, 2015)

The possibility that quantum processing with nuclear spins might be operative in the brain is explored. Phos- phorus is identified as the unique biological element with a nuclear spin that can serve as a qubit for such

putative quantum processing - a neural qubit - while the phosphate ion is the only possible qubit-transporter.

We identify the “Posner molecule”, Ca9(PO4)6, as the unique molecule that can protect the neural qubits on very

long times and thereby serve as a (working) quantum-memory. A central requirement for quantum-processing

is quantum entanglement. It is argued that the enzyme catalyzed chemical reaction which breaks a pyrophos- phate ion into two phosphate ions can quantum entangle pairs of qubits. Posner molecules, formed by binding

such phosphate pairs with extracellular calcium ions, will inherit the nuclear spin entanglement. A mechanism

for transporting Posner molecules into presynaptic neurons during vesicle endocytosis is proposed. Quantum

measurements can occur when a pair of Posner molecules chemically bind and subsequently melt, releasing a

shower of intra-cellular calcium ions that can trigger further neurotransmitter release and enhance the probability

of post-synaptic neuron firing. Multiple entangled Posner molecules, triggering non-local quantum correlations

of neuron firing rates, would provide the key mechanism for neural quantum processing. Implications, both in

vitro and in vivo, are briefly mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.47.37.101 (talk) 20:01, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Article update

In 2014 and 2015, very important developments of the theory took place and many aspects of it were proven by experiments. The article stops only in 2013 and criticisms dating back to that year. In the meantime, I find it necessary to inform the reader with a warning, and then, update the page. Even the pages dedicated only to the 2 scientists speak, in a very vague way, of the research that took place in 2014 and 2015. In detail I saw that the Evidences section talks about it, albeit in a vague way. But the criticism section has remained dated and does not incorporate this new data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.163.248.1 (talk) 17:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

You need to be more specific than that if you want to change anything here. jps (talk) 12:22, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Quantum computation in off the shelf graphics cards?

Hi, have to be careful but I think there's evidence for semi classical interaction in graphics cards. My research clearly shows that certain components are able to show inter-processor electron leakage under specific conditions, though not normally used in this way people who overclock cards often get strange effects. As this (used to be) TS SCI I only mention it as better technologies already exist. It was discovered independently here 88.81.156.140 (talk) 07:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC) and as yet hasn't been replicated. The really strange thing is that it only happens on old cards that have seen some use, under specific conditions that I discovered its possible to make one use a machine version of intuition to "guess" a normally impossible AES key that would require an absurd amount of processor time if certain aspects like the file content and offset are known.

2022 Experiments

Thanks for the additions here. I found a second citation which I've added even though it's not great - there is no paywall. There is also a paper in 'Nature' https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10068-4 maybe primary source. Appears to be a different experiment further substantiating the hypothesis.Thelisteninghand (talk) 17:23, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Criticism and Neuroscience sections

The Criticism section is unusual for Wiki, in that it seems to be constructed not to add to the topic but to try to tear it down without exposing the authors to counter-argument. This is particularly obvious in the 'Neuroscience' section, which seems to be authored purely to attack Penrose et al without allowing counterpoints, e.g. it claims there are no gap junctions in microglia etc but it is not up to date and offers none of the large number of references to the opposite - i.e. pushing an argument without allowing dissent. Not very Wiki? 60.226.145.226 (talk) 03:12, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the main difficulty with the Neuroscience section is that it offers its own critique as opposed to citing existing published critiques; it is essentially presenting original research.Gmusser (talk) 16:37, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Gmusser - I second this. I have no remarks on the value of the argument itself, but the content of that section went against the purposes of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. I removed it today, and subsequently came to the talkpage to see if there were any similar complaints. I am glad to find that others have observed this problem. ChimaFan12 (talk) 22:18, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Quantum effects in microtubules

I think there should be a section with studies that confirm that microtubules can deliver quantum processes. As this is one of the most disputed topics ( is it possible for Quantum processes to happen in warm & wet environment of microtubules. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936 176.0.203.52 (talk) 06:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Exciting publication, although I couldn't understand a word of it. UpdateNerd (talk) 06:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing controversial about the idea that microtubules might exhibit quantum effects. Quantum effects are ubiquitous across much of biochemistry, and there's no reason why one should be surprised to see them also appear in microtubules. What is controversial is that there is no special relationship whatsoever between such an effect, and the notion of consciousness. The paper you submit will be of interest to people who study microtubules, and to people who care about the cytoskeleton, but nobody who seriously studies cognition will get anything relevant to their field from it. — Guillaume Pelletier ~ 22:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)