'The Conscious Pilot' Synchronized dendritic webs move through the brain to mediate consciousness

        

The Conscious Connection: A Psycho-Physical Bridge Between Brain and Pan-Experiential Quantum Geometry

with Jon Powell,in "Mind That Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium" (D. Skrbina, ed.) Benjamins Pub, forthcoming 2008

Update on quantum biology vs decoherence                            Center for Consciousness Studies
                                                                                                                                             
That's Life! The geometry of pi electron clouds                                              Hong Kong conference

Chapter in Quantum Aspects of Life, edited by Abbott, Davies, Patil

Blog: Being the skunk at an atheist convention

Talk at Google: A New Marriage of Brain and Computer - Why 'The Singularity" Is Bogus
On YouTube

Are life and consciousness connected to the funda-mental level of reality?

 
 

BleepKongress in Germany

Singing Brain on YouTube

Quantum Consciousness in Italian! Corriere della Serra, Sept 21, 2007
Quando il cervello fa 'bing' (by Professor Massimo Piatelli Palmarini)

Conference photos by David Chalmers

Quantum Mind 2007

July 16-20, 2007

Salzburg, Austria

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2007,
July 23-26, 2007
Budapest, Hungary

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006

April 4-8, 2006,

Tucson, Arizona

Dream Debate DVD

MindVille Movie

Orch OR on WikiPedia

Penrose Review in WIRED

Consciousness and a Theory of Everything - Roger Penrose

Hackery/Quackery

in Scientific American

Breakthrough Study

on EEG of Meditation

Debate with Christof Koch

in Sci-Con Review

"Quantum approaches to consciousness"

by Harald Atmanspacher in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"The Good, the Bad and the Octopus"

Conference Report

ASSC 11 in Las Vegas

(Journal of Consciousness Studies)
"Are dendritic webs the functional architecture of consciousness?"

ASSC 11 Poster

 

What the bleep?

 

 

 


Consciousness defines our existence and reality, but the mechanism by which

the brain generates thoughts and feelings remains unknown.

Most explanations portray the brain as a computer, with nerve cells ("neurons") and their synaptic connections acting as simple switches. However computation alone cannot explain why we have feelings and awareness, an "inner life."

We also don't know if our conscious perceptions accurately portray the external world. At its base, the universe follows the seemingly bizarre and paradoxical laws of quantum mechanics, with particles being in multiple places simultaneously, connected over distance, and with time not existing. But the “classical” world we perceive is definite, with a flow of time. The boundary or edge (quantum state reduction, or ‘collapse of the wave function”) between the quantum and classical worlds somehow involves consciousness.

I spent twenty years studying how computer-like structures called microtubules inside neurons and other cells could process information related to consciousness. But when I read The emperor’s new mind by Sir Roger Penrose in 1991 I realized that consciousness may be a specific process on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds. Roger and I teamed up to develop a theory of consciousness based on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons. Roger’s mechanism for an objective threshold for quantum state reduction connects us to the most basic, “funda-mental” level of the universe at the Planck scale, and is called objective reduction (OR). Our suggestion for biological feedback to microtubule quantum states is orchestration (Orch), hence our model is called orchestrated objective reduction, Orch OR.

In recent years I have considered that such a connection to the basic proto-conscious level of reality where Platonic values are embedded is strikingly similar to Buddhist and other spiritual conceptsconcepts.

This website is intended to convey the ideas and implications behind Orch OR. Click here for a general overview. However for a reader-friendly, entry level approach, try Interviews (or Popular Press under Media). The general categories are:

Personal includes my professional status, a statement about my interest in consciousness, curriculum vitae, contact information and a personal photo gallery.

Publications includes articles related to quantum consciousness/Orch OR in several categories:

Media includes lectures, Powerpoint presentations, computer simulations, popular press articles, images.

Views includes slightly tangential material from me and others.

Quantum Mind Archives includes abstracts from the two Quantum Mind conferences held in 1999 in Flagstaff, Arizona, and in 2003 in Tucson. Also included are archives from the Quantum Mind email discussion group which ran from June, 1998 to October, 2002.

Ultimate Computing is my complete book Ultimate computing: Biomolecular consciousness and nanotechnology , published by Elsevier-North Holland in 1987. Some have called it my “pre-quantum ode to microtubules” (assisted by Conrad Schneiker)