Is Brain in a Superfluid State? Physics of Consciousness

Summary

Quantum physics may hold the key to understanding human consciousness. New theoretical work suggests our sense of "self" emerges like a phase transition in physics - similar to how liquid helium becomes a superfluid. The model shows consciousness arises when neural connections reach a critical threshold, explaining how infants develop self-awareness around age two as their brains achieve coherent quantum states.

Abstract

The article "Physics of Consciousness" treats mind as an abstract Hilbert space with a set of orthogonal base vectors to describe information like particles, which are considered to be the elementary excitation of a quantum field. A non-Hermitian operator of Self is introduced to create these information like particles which in turn will constitute a coherent information field. The non - zero average of this self operator is shown to constitute our basic I. Awareness and consciousness is described very simply as a response function of these operators to external world. We show with a very simple neural model how a baby less than two years old develop self-awareness as the neural connectivity achieves a critical value. The all-important I is the basic cognitive order parameter of each human brain and is a result of thermodynamic phase transition from a chaotic disordered state to a symmetry broken coherent ordered state, very akin to physics of superfluidity.

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