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Quantum Aspects of Brain Activity and the Role of Consciousness

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Abstract

From 1984 onwards I realized that the Margenau story was inadequate. What was needed was a rigorous mathematical treatment that would give precision to the action of mental events on neural events, not just the ill-defined probability field. When I was attached to the Neuroscience Research Program at the Rockefeller University for some months in 1986 and 1987, I organized two mini-symposia in the hope that there could be progress beyond the stage where Margenau left it in The Miracle of Existence. Henry Margenau came to both these informal gatherings in New York. Unfortunately Margenau and Wigner were not well enough to make the progress that I hoped for. John Archibald Wheeler was unable to attend, but he nominated two physicists. I have all the documents of these two most disappointing projects. It was evident that the physicists did not realize that here was a great chance for quantum physicists. One physicist insisted that it could all be done by thermal physics, not quantum physics!

Keywords

  • Wave Packet
  • Pyramidal Cell
  • Synaptic Vesicle
  • Nerve Impulse
  • Apical Dendrite

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Beck, F., Eccles, J.C. (1994). Quantum Aspects of Brain Activity and the Role of Consciousness. In: How the SELF Controls Its BRAIN. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-49224-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-49224-2_9

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