creeky belly
Posts: 205
Joined: June 2006
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| Quote | The EPR paradox has demonstrated "spooky action at a distance" for seventy years in quantum experiment after experiment.
Putting them together with the study of consciousness provides a lot of explanatory power for scientific observations like Libet's.
As to direct experimental results... I recently found this...
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“In recent times the interest for quantum models of brain activity has rapidly grown. The Penrose-Hameroff model assumes that microtubules inside neurons are responsible for quantum computation inside brain. Several experiments seem to indicate that EPR-like correlations are possible at the biological level. In the past year , a very intensive experimental work about this subject has been done at DiBit Labs in Milan, Italy by our research group. Our experimental set-up is made by two separated and completely shielded basins where two parts of a common human DNA neuronal culture are monitored by EEG. Our main experimental result is that, under stimulation of one culture by means of a 630 nm laser beam at 300 ms, the cross-correlation between the two cultures grows up at maximum levels. Despite at this level of understanding it is impossible to tell if the origin of this non-locality is a genuine quantum effect, our experimental data seem to strongly suggest that biological systems present non-local properties not explainable by classical models."
(emphasis mine)
Nonlocal correlations between separated neural networks
BTW, the term "nonlocal" is a direct reference to "spooky action at a distance" of the EPR Paradox |
So the result of the experiment was to couple two macroscopic neural cultures, and then see how strongly coupled the state was? How did they deal with decoherence? Unless you're dealing with superconductors, optical qubits, ion traps, or cavity QED, there's no way to keep the quantum state from reverting to a classical state (300 ms is way too long). I think you could make a strong case that this is probably not a quantum effect they're observing.
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