Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience' started by Write4U, Sep 8, 2018.

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  1. globali Registered Senior Member

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    They don't. Read some pharmaceutical kinetics of anesthetics. And it doesn't lie in the microtubules.

    Don't judge from the result.
    Theoretically, i don't see why some extra cognitive boost from some "magic" microtubules in our toes would harm anyone.

    What is the structural difference that makes microtubules in the toe to be just a simple structural "bricks" and microtubules in the brain to be tiny sophisticated computers?

    If you can't describe it with a few simple words, means that you yourself haven't understood it well.
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Watch the video.Unless you know better that an esteemed anesthesiologist
    Unless your brains are in your toes, I'd say it does make a difference. But when you stub your toe, do you feel pain? That sensory event is transmitted by microtubules to your brain.
    Microtubules are never just simple bricks. They are dynamic in growth and contraction.
    Every cell in your body is copied by microtubules every 24 hrs, for your entire life.
    That is ridiculous. The list of microtubule functions alone takes about an entire page.
    There are sub-groups of microtubules, each with completely different functions from other sub-groups.
    Functions of Microtubules
    And much, much more.

    https://biologywise.com/microtubules-function

    It is clear you do not quite understand the range and scope of utility of microtubules.
    Make note of the numbers. There are billions of dynamical microtubules in your body.
    Example;

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    https://phys.org/news/2015-04-quantum-criticality-life-proteins.html

    Anesthetics act in quantum channels in brain microtubules to prevent consciousness.
    Craddock TJ, Hameroff SR, Ayoub AT, Klobukowski M, Tuszynski JA1.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714379
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You think it's a waste product. That doesn't mean that consciousness isn't found there. After all, every single living thing that exhibits consciousness generates urea. When they stop generating urea, they lose consciousness (and then die.) They are far more essential to consciousness than microtubules. You can be conscious without working microtubules; you can't be conscious if you are not generating urea.
     
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Talk to any veterinarian. Ask him if all living organisms respond in exactly the same way to anesthesia, and if they use the same anesthesia for an ostrich as they use for a cat.
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Does urea perform mitosis? Enough said.
    Why don't you ask Hameroff. He did the study.
    My guess is that all brain microtubules in all animals respond the same because they all use the same 2 tubulin polymers.
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Are microtubules required for life? Enough said.
    No thanks. I know enough vets to not have to ask him.
     
  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    ONE WORD: Mitosis. (think about the implication)
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    What would happen if a cell did not have any microtubules?
    Any other candidates for splitting and copying chromosomes?
    Consider the required chronology from micro to macro. No cells, no extracellular matrix. But microtubules in cells make the cytoskeletons that give structural support to cells themselves.
    OK, ask them, though I doubt they are as knowledgeable as Hameroff in the actual chemistry. With all due respect to veterinarians, anesthesia requires veterinary anesthesiologists.

    What Does a Veterinary Anesthesiologist Do?
    https://www.thebalancecareers.com/veterinary-anesthesiologist-125784
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Let me ask a question, for a change.

    What is the smallest known (dynamical) biological information processor in animals? Any takers?
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Sodium and potassium ions. They process neural impulses.
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    True the sodium potassium "pump" does have a regulatory function. In that respect they are processors of informaton. They are regulators of the information being processed. While it is called a pump, it has a single purpose of balancing sodium in a cell. It is more like a control mechanism rather than a long distance information transport system.
    Yet another single function controller.

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    https://socratic.org/questions/how-does-the-sodium-potassium-pump-work

    Steady state (dynamic equilibrum)

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    https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/studies/concepts/steadystate.html

    They do have an important singular function. But, AFAIK, they work solo and outside of any "pumping" network.
    As compared to the microtubule network, the sodium potassium pump is considerably more simple and is more of a process than a processor.

    A fatal flaw exists in any argument which proposes that any other control mechanism is capable of governing mitosis, the ultimate information processor and control mechanism.

    As compared to ;

    and

    https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/05/2...-works-could-lead-to-better-anticancer-drugs/

    Does this pervasive inter- and intra-cellular neural activity remind of a brain function?

    Structures and Functions of Microtubules
    https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/studies/invertebrates/microtubules.html
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    continued;

    Three related micro-polymers assisting in information transport.



    and how microtubules self-assemble


    and this interesting paper.

    Staying on Track: Common Features of DNA Helicases and Microtubule Motors

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    https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(00)81139-3
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    An unexpected discovery. Took me completely by surprise.

    ANESTHESIA, CONSCIOUSNESS, BOHM AND PENROSE by Stuart Hameroff
    https://www.fetzer-franklin-fund.org/media/anesthesia-consciousness-bohm-and-penrose-hameroff-video/

    And even Sam Harris is interested by the implications of the brain's abilities and functions



    and Lawrence Krauss.

     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  17. globali Registered Senior Member

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    "Perhaps the best approach is to pinpoint the action of anesthetic gases which selectively block consciousness, sparing non-conscious brain activities"

    The common denominator is that they all affect ion channels. Some spare microtubules.

    This is crazy! Your arguments are vaguely attached to scientific inference or even logic. Only in these 3 sentences i pointed out the following leaps of logic:
    1)The transmission of an impulse is not cognition.
    2)The microtubules of the epithelial, muscular, adipose cells, pericytes, endothelial and other cells do not transmit and impulse.
    3) Microtubules are a part of the cytoskeleton.
    4) The cytoskeleton is a complex organelle with many fuctions that we haven't cleared up 100% yet due to the complexity.
    5) Cytoskeleton is composed by various elements and cell types, including the centiole, kinesins, dyneins, etc, etc. Cytoskeleton is a complex intracellular organelle with dynamic and complex functions, but the same thing is true for every other organelle, such as the nucleolus, mitochondria, etc.

    Yes but the info for that is already present in the genetic code.
    Microtubules are a part of an entire orchestra. They don't divide the cells by themselves.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    They are the mechanism that "reads " the genetic code and copies it, with exquisite fidelity.

    Note the stage at which microtubules become the scaffolding for mitosis. @ 6:32

    And at 9;00 note the growth of microtubules, the information highways.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  19. Bells Staff Member

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    Andrew Wakefield was probably once deemed an "esteemed" physician..
    You do realise that microtubules are not that long, right? Among other reasons for your being wrong.

    Principally, your spine says hi by the way.

    And?
    Not really.

    I find it takes less space if I don't increase the font to like 50 and bold it each time.

    You'd probably find if you do not invent functions for the microtubules and exaggerate, that it would take a lot less room.
    What?

    When he puts a patient under, he's not calculating how much to give him based on his microtubules. For goodness sakes!

    Your exaggeration is becoming embarrassing and extreme.
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And? Do you realize by dismissing ORCH OR you are not talking about a scientist gone haywire, but in one fell swoop you have declared hundreds of dedicated scientists to be unfit to shine your boots. Talking about premature exaggeration?
    Did I say "single microtubules"? Where? You do realize that axons can grow up a meter, and then network with other axons.

    Are Microtubules the Brain of the Neuron
    http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/are-microtubules-the-brain-of-the-neuron

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    probably could not do it without the microtubules inside the axons.

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    Microtubule-delivered mitochondria

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    Illustration of a kinesin protein walking on a microtubule, transporting its cargo (credit: The Inner Life of a Cell by Cellular Visions and Harvard)
    MT are not just bricks in the cytoskeleton.
    Yes really.
    I found that quoted passages get really small and hard to read.
    Restrictions restrictions.
    Sorry, it does take a lot of room to extol all the virtues of microtubules. (20 pages!) That was my point.....

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    What "what"?
    No he goes by size and weight of the patient. It is the microtubules that are rendered unconscious (inoperative). And then only some of the brain microtubules.
    1. And you are becoming hysterical. You're still pursuing the wrong approach to earning my respect. You're becoming a predator.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    There are not hundreds of scientists that support Orch-R. There are two, plus maybe a small handful of supporters.

    To reiterate, there is no evidence that microtubules are tiny quantum computers.

    The notion is mere speculation. The Orch-R concept of Penrose and Hameroff has made a number of false predictions and is fairly thoroughly discredited. I quote from the Wiki article on "Quantum Mind":

    " Hameroff provided a hypothesis that microtubules would be suitable hosts for quantum behavior.[20] Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimersubunits. The dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart and that may contain delocalized pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2 nm. Hameroff proposed that these electrons are close enough to become entangled.[21] Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a Bose–Einstein condensate, but this was discredited.[22] He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too was experimentally discredited.[23]

    However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is not an accepted model of brain physiology.[24] In other words, there is a missing link between physics and neuroscience,[25] for instance, the proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing, wasfalsified by Kikkawa et al.,[26][27] who showed all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells was also falsified.[28] Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible,[29] by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions.[30]

    In January 2014, Hameroff and Penrose claimed that the discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan in March 2013[31] corroborates the Orch-OR theory.[15][32]

    Although these theories are stated in a scientific framework, it is difficult to separate them from the personal opinions of the scientist. The opinions are often based on intuition or subjective ideas about the nature of consciousness."

    It's not doing very well. It seems more than likely it will swirl down the toilet of history when these two old men die.
     
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  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, but there are hundreds of scientist studying microtubules.
    Persistence does pay off sometimes.
    It has been an area of interest for a long long time, no? Hundreds of scientist are still trying to make a case for an "emergent" consciousness from complex "neural systems"
    Maybe, but that still remains to be seen.

    And history has proved many critics of new science wrong also. Time, as usual will be the judge. As long as nothing has been ruled out definitively, I'll continue monitoring for any progress.......

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  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    continuing our search.

    Mystery solved about the machines that move your genes
    ..........
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190902113627.htm

    and

    Molecular motor

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_motor


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    Carbon nanotubes
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2019
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