Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

That would be best I think

 

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Microtubules is a closed subject, no longer worthy of discussion?
I'm not done yet.

Microtubules: Evolving roles and critical cellular interactions

Microtubules in the lens: A developmental role

more.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880148/

 

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I don't see many discussions worthy of note. Apparently you do not see my informative posts on a subject that finally is becoming a major item as worthy of discussion.

Maybe this will stir some imaginative thoughts on the subject. You've been asking for this.

JUSTIN RIDDLE, PH.D.
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENTIST AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

and more to come.

 

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And it appears that the benzene molecule already functions as part of a language in bacterial "quorum sensing".

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Note that each species has a unique language that cannot be understood by other bacteria.

 

The first diagram does not include benzene, nor does the freeze-framed video diagram. (The rings are 5 membered saturated rings containing oxygen that don't resemble benzene at all.) I can't find any mention of benzene in the linked article either. Why are you posting these diagrams together?

I would be quite surprised to find that benzene plays a role in biological systems. It is a hydrocarbon that is not water soluble. More the kind of thing you find on an oil refinery than in a bacterium, I should have thought.

 

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Not the same physically, chemically or biologically.

(Perhaps Write4U only read the advertizing page for these molecules, and didn't bother clicking through to the "How It Actually Works" fine print...)

 

What do I have to do to make you read the scientific articles I submit in support of my posts?

Apparently it is the stable non-polarity and the non-soluble properties of benzene that is used by microtubules in some form.
Note: Benzene and Olive oil are related and instrumental in "resonance clouds"as identified by Hameroff and Riddle (above).

Consciousness, Cognition and the Neuronal Cytoskeleton – A New Paradigm Needed in Neuroscience

more.... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9245524/#

On the origin of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene in extra virgin olive oil
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7785357/

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Right, they are all derivatives of benzene, no?

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https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/09/01/benzene-derivatives-in-organic-chemistry/

 

Furan would have 2 double bonds in the ring. What you have shown is dihydrofuran, i.e. with one double bond saturated with extra hydrogen atoms.

The rings in his picture on the video are substituted tetrahydrofuranones, as they have no double bonds and a ketone (carbonyl) group at one position. They are also cyclic esters, known as lactones, the one in question being γ-butyolactone, as it has a 4 carbon chain with the -O- atom on the carbon furthest from the acid (carbonyl) end).

So 2 ways to describe the group, but yeah, bugger all to do with benzene.

 

I read the link. Neither it nor the extracts you are quoting make any reference to benzene.

They refer to aromatic amino acid rings in tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylalanine. That is quite a different matter.

From this, and the chart you have now produced of benzene derivatives, it seems you are confusing benzene with compounds that include a benzene ring. Benzene is benzene. These other compounds are not benzene. They have in general quite different properties (though toluene is somewhat similar).

(Olive oil obviously has fuck-all to do with any of this.)

 

And also in microtubules.

Yes, the benzene ring is the basis for the hydrophobic properties that make quantum activities possible.
Question: Are all benzene derivatives hydrophobic?

Consciousness, Cognition and the Neuronal Cytoskeleton – A New Paradigm Needed in Neuroscience.
Stuart Hameroff 1,2,3*

Note; I did not say that microtubules contain olive oil. Please don't project your own interpretation of what I am saying.
Correct me, don't ridicule me.

 

No the benzene ring is not the basis for hydrophobic properties. Some compounds with a benzene ring are quite water-soluble, e.g. phenol.

The Hameroff article you quote seems very garbled. Meyer and Overton used relative solubility in water and olive oil as a simple and convenient way to determine relative hydrophilic and hydrophobic characteristics of anaesthetics in the mid c.19th. That is the sole relevance of olive oil to this topic. The link you cited was about olive oil picking up benzene from the environment, so utterly irrelevant.

In fact the modern theory of anaesthetics suggests hydrophobic species may work by dissolving in the bilipid layer of cell membranes and thereby interrupting the conduction between nerve cells. Nothing to do with microtubules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaesthetic_action

I never suggested you think microtubules contain olive oil, by the way.

You ridicule yourself with no help from me. Sadly.

 

Yes, an "organic" process, demonstrating that living organisms may be able to use the hydrophobic properties in an organic quantum system, such as the microtubule networks in every Eukaryotic organism on earth.

No, you said it was irrelevant and that is not true. You may want to critique your own posits.

Remember your earlier opposition to the concept of ORCH OR, based on the "wet" environment, which was the original critique. It seems that question has been answered, no?

 

Indeed, and the answer on Orch OR remains as in post 5 (that's five, i.e on page one) of this daft, rambling thread. I'll just remind you what I posted:

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 tubulinprotein dimer subunits. 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, was falsified 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, is it?

Your latest link to a 2022 paper from Hameroff (Penrose being now 92 having withdrawn from all this) indicates Hameroff is still flogging this dead horse. From the look of the paper he is losing it,rather. It's poorly written and muddled. From his Wiki entry, it begins to look as if Hameroff has fallen into the trap of believing his own bullshit and is sliding into woo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff

Posting a link about benzene being taken up from the environment during olive oil processing is silly. This does not show some special "quantum" process. Olive oil is largely composed of molecules with long hydrocarbon chains which are good solvents for a hydrocarbon like benzene, that's all. You have seized on olive oil for no better reason than that it happens to be what these guys in the c.19th used when investigating anaesthesia. It's just a random solvent for hydrophobic species.

These latest posts are just a further demonstration, as if we needed it, that you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Apparently the brain was once considered to be too hydrophilic for quantum coherence. That proposition has been debunked by Hameroff, et al, finding that the benzene ring .

Effects of the principal hydroxy-metabolites of benzene on microtubule polymerization

more ...... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7447702/

 

Yes, and that was what year? Oh, 2018 that we discussed it, long after the claimsandcounter claims were made.

From the link.

???

What is the role of dendrites in synaptic transmission?

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According to Hameroff, all those objections have been answered satisfactorily.

All proposals relating to consciousness by all scientists, are based on intuition or subjective ideas. No one has the answer!

We discussed this years ago. The science has come a long way since then.

Show me where Penrosehaswirgdrawn from ORCH OR .

"It begins to look" says nothing definitive.
From the link you provided;

The term "computing" covers a lot of interpretations about the way information is being processed and how in toto it may result in an emergent self-aware consciousness is the question, no?

But the focus is on the non-neural microtubules in the cytoplasm and cytoskeleton that also communicate and compute. Microtubules are a form of biological computers. This type of processing is exactly what Penrose was looking for.

It is the non-polar hydrophobic properties of the benzene ring that solved the question about a warm wet environment. Debunking debunked.

(quantum optical effects = blindsight?)

And you have made an in-depth study of microtubules and what they do? I don't think so. You seem to be way behind the latest discoveries of microtubule functions.

 

There has been nothing that gives credible support to the Orch-OR hypothesis since I posted that.

When did Penrose last publish anything about this? Not in the last decade, that's for sure. It's just Hameroff, on his own, now.

 

The quoted link has nothing to do with your statement, which seems in any case to be cut off mid-sentence.

It's about the way benzene's metabolites poison the operation of cells. Nothing to do with consciousness and nothing involving any special"quantum" effects.