Foreword
The realization of this project was for the sake of elucidating the mechanisms of
inputting the sensory information carried by the membrane potentials that enter
the brain cortex and constructing biologically feasible model of subneuronal
microtubule based processing of information.
The electric currents are relevant stimuli eliciting conscious experience like
memorization of past events (Wilder Penfield, 1954a; 1954b; 1955) and are used
to restore the visual image perception in blind man via implanted in the occipital
cortex electrodes linked to bionic eye-camera (Dobelle, 2000). The link between
the EM field and the cytoskeletal microtubules however was not thoroughly
understood. Indeed in the current models presented at the Quantum Mind II
Conference, held at Tucson, Arizona, 15-19 March 2003, have been found
severe biological and physical inconsistencies. The ferroelectric model
(Tuszynski, 2003; Mershin, 2003) leads to extremely high electric field strength
needed to polarize microtubules and does not take into account that the
suggested α - β electron hopping leads to conformational transitions that
assemble - disassemble the microtubule. The same error is found in the Orch OR
model (Hameroff, 2003a; 2003b) plus additional experimentally disproved
predictions about the microtubule lattice, and too slow protein dynamics (25ms).
The third model predicting topologically stabilized quantum states and anyons
suggested by Porter (2003) depends on the magnetic field strength that is
responsible for putative quantum Hall effect in the 2D electron layers presented
on the microtubule surface. This idea is not realizable in vivo because of the
extremely small magnetic field strength inside neurons assessed to be in the
range 10-10 - 107 tesla and because of the millikelvin temperatures needed for
QHE. In addition there is little or no data in the presented models how exactly
microtubule conformations produce biologically important effects inside neurons.
More intriguing information
1. Motivations, Values and Emotions: Three Sides of the same Coin2. Firm Closure, Financial Losses and the Consequences for an Entrepreneurial Restart
3. Initial Public Offerings and Venture Capital in Germany
4. Automatic Dream Sentiment Analysis
5. Langfristige Wachstumsaussichten der ukrainischen Wirtschaft : Potenziale und Barrieren
6. Herman Melville and the Problem of Evil
7. Unemployment in an Interdependent World
8. Neighborhood Effects, Public Housing and Unemployment in France
9. Improving behaviour classification consistency: a technique from biological taxonomy
10. Word Sense Disambiguation by Web Mining for Word Co-occurrence Probabilities