Theory of Brain Function, Quantum Mechanics and Superstrings
arXiv Preprint Archive May 24, 1995 D. Nanopoulos
The brain's microtubules (MTs) may serve as microsites of consciousness by supporting quantum superpositions that collapse into physiological actions. MTs possess a binary error-correcting code with 64 words, related to a kind of mental code, and their periodic paracrystalline structure can sustain coherent quantum states long enough for quantum computing, as conjectured by Hameroff and Penrose. A new string-derived mechanism for quantum collapse, proposed by Ellis, Mavromatos, and the author, predicts that 10,000 neurons take about 1 second to dynamically collapse and process information. This matches observations of conscious events and explains properties like backward masking, referral backwards in time, non-locality in the cerebral cortex, and the unitary sense of self.