Prof. Stuart Hameroff

University of Arizona

Abstract:
Biology is said to be too ‘warm, wet and noisy’ for functional quantum mechanisms, but living systems are highly heterogeneous, consisting of varying drug solubility compartments. Most drugs are polar, water-soluble, and act by binding to charged surface receptors. But anesthetic gases which selectively block consciousness are non-polar, uncharged, water-insoluble, and bind and act in brain proteins by weak quantum van der Waals forces. This implies consciousness occurs in non-polar, ‘hydrophobic’ (water excluding, thus not ‘wet’) fat/oil-like regions with low Hildebrand solubility coefficient lambda 15.2 to 19.3 SI units (‘oil and water don’t mix’). These regions consist largely of organic rings of aromatic amino acids in protein interiors, regions of delocalized clouds of ‘pi electron resonance’. When properly arrayed geometrically, these intra-protein clouds couple, oscillate in terahertz and support quantum optical effects (fluorescence, exciton transfer, optical phonons, super-radiance, entanglement). Tubulin proteins geometrically arrayed in microtubules each have 86 aromatic amino acid rings which extend to boundaries with adjacent tubulins in microtubule lattices. Thus non-polar, quantum-friendly regions can entangle between tubulins through microtubule lattice helical pathways, extending mesoscopically and macroscopically. At ambient temperatures, microtubules have coherent excitations and resonance patterns (‘triplets-of-triplets’) in kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz and terahertz (thus warm, but not ‘noisy’, discovered by Anirban Bandyopadhyay), and quantum optical effects inhibited by anesthetics. The anesthetic-soluble non-polar regions within microtubules (‘quantum underground’) appear to act as adiabatic, decoherence-free sub-spaces. Coherent microtubule excitations and resonances are driven by ambient temperature (so ‘warm’, but not ‘noisy’). Helical pathways of superpositioned tubulins in microtubules may act as ‘topological qubits’ to provide quantum error correction. Deep within biomolecules, a ‘quantum underground’ pervades and organizes cells and living systems. Life itself, as Schrodinger suggested, is a quantum mechanism, and consciousness can be non-local.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2022.869935/full

Bio:
Stuart Hameroff MD is Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology & Psychology, Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, and attending anesthesiologist at Banner-University Medical Centers, all at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. With an undergraduate interest in consciousness, Hameroff researched cell division/mitosis in medical school, specifically how mitotic spindle microtubules precisely recognized and moved chromosomes. Comparing the microtubule lattice structure to computer matrices, Hameroff proposed that microtubules were computer-like sources of biological intelligence and consciousness. In the early 1990s Hameroff teamed with famed British physicist and Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose to develop the controversial Orch OR quantum theory of consciousness in microtubules. Since then he has worked to test and validate Orch OR, including studies of actions of anesthetic gases on microtubule quantum processes. As microtubules have been found to have coherent excitations in kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz and terahertz frequencies, Hameroff helped pioneer ‘transcranial ultrasound’ (megahertz vibrations) to treat mental and cognitive disorders. Hameroff also co-founded the University of Arizona’s Center for Consciousness Studies, and directs its annual ‘The Science of Consciousness’ conferences.