Was Penrose Right? NEW EVIDENCE For Quantum Effects In The Brain

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Nobel laureate Roger Penrose is widely held to be one of the most brilliant living physicists for his wide-ranging work from black holes to cosmology. And then there’s his idea about how consciousness is caused by quantum processes. Most scientists have dismissed this as a cute eccentricity—a guy like Roger gets to have at least one crazy theory without being demoted from the supersmartypants club. The most common argument for this dismissal is that quantum effects can’t survive long enough in an environment as warm and chaotic as the brain. Well, a new study has revealed that Penrose’s prime candidate molecule for this quantum activity does indeed exhibit large scale quantum activity. So was Penrose right after all? Are you a quantum entity?

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Christopher Pollack & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
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[thorrBEM]

My brain is both empty and full at the same time.

[blackshard]

This is by far the most lucid explanation of this argument I've ever heard. Fantastic work, Matt. Seriously.

[drbabcock]

Thank you for featuring our scientific research! I appreciate how you pointed out that our paper is not at all related to Penrose and Hameroff's conjecture on consciousness. I am grateful for your explanation of how the exciting field of quantum biology has many applications that are not related to highly-speculative quantum consciousness research. Bravo!

[vazap]

I've been fascinated by Penrose's proposition since he started about 20 years ago. I'm now very excited to see my favourite YouTubers bring it back to the table, Sabine, Anton, and now Matt, despite his initial skepticism. I think this could lead to a brand new form of research and medical paths, not to mention tackle hard questions such as the existence of free will. Super exciting times!

[dylanverden]

I'm a neuroscientist working for patients with rare genetic disorders affecting kinesins, some of the motors that move cargo along microtubules. As a result I'm also familiar with genetic disorders in microtubule, or microtubule-related, genes.

Microtubules are quite dynamic - adaptors and motors are constantly applying modifications to the microtubules, and I'm quite curious about how these would play into this paradigm; the microtubule ecosystem would be adapted to supporting this kind of quantum encoding - if it's meaningful.

One reason I'm skeptical of this iteration of quantum consciousness is that you would expect microtubule-related mutations to cause disorders with a more profound effect on "consciousness, " however you decide to define that. Cognitive symptoms certainly are common and sometimes profound in these disorders, but not in a way that seems fundamentally separated from other neurological disorders.

A good follow-up might be:

1) Decide on an operational definition of consciousness, with pre-defined clinical measurements.

2) Look at microtubule-affecting genetic conditions with variable predicted impact on these tryptophan-mediated quantum effects

3) Perform a meta-analysis across studies, and check whether there's any kind of relationship between clinical features of "consciousness" and types of mutations.

I'm also skeptical of the Sherlock approach; I'm quite interested in possible quantum effects in neurobiology and there's a ton we don't know about microtubules, but so much of this reminds me of claims that the pineal gland held the soul.

[QuietFrankie]

Regarding quantum effects in biological systems, chloroplasts exhibit electron tunneling that increases the efficiency of energy transfer (I spent a few hundred hours measuring this in grad school). While it's not entanglement or on a brain-sized scale, it does show that evolution is capable of tapping into quantum effects even in wet, warm, messy systems. Great video as always!

[symmetrie_bruch]

if you´re vague enough, you´re always right. i think we can all agree that quantum field theory play a role in conciousness, because it plays a role in practically everything

[UnbanMeNowdotcom]

An intriguing idea that consciousness could emerge from quantum level phenomena. Great to see new studies providing weight to these theories. Would be interesting to follow up on how this progresses.

[MrMctastics]

Something I didn't learn until reading foundational papers on the subject, is that Penrose invented some of the fundamental concepts around topological quantum computing. That makes him, super cool 👍

Applications of Negative Dimensional Tensors (1971)

[jonathanbranam]

PBS SpaceTime does an amazing job of making me smarter and feeling dumber with every video. Please never stop.

[ANunes]

All of Penrose's arguments and descriptions of his Cosmological ideas about black wholes and the CCC are so easy to understand and so hard to find fault with that it's always shocked me that his arguments about consciousness are basically 250 pages of "It can't work the way we think it works." followed by 50 pages of "So anyway... Microtubules."

I get a feeling he was hoping to kickstart investigation into these objects and pass the torch, so he didn't feel the need to get super formal about it. Hopefully, he lives to see this foundation get some more experimental attention.

[Superdonko]

Anton Petrov covers this topic and the part you missed about how certain anesthetics switch off consciousness by disrupting quantum effects in the microtubules.

[periurban]

"Sherlocking consciousness" lol

[JohnDlugosz]

I saw Penrose live give his presentation on this. It was after he wrote the first book but before he finished the second. This was long before YouTube, so the first time I saw him give one of his presentations. His hand-drawn projection slides are still marvelous.

[Yournamehere]

Seriously this has the potential to be one of the most ground breaking discoveries in the history of humanity. If this leads to some scientific understand of conciseness it would be a pivotal point in our understand of the world. If it turns out to have nothing to do with conciseness its still a groundbreaking understanding in how the brain works, and its complexity. Assuming the paper holds up. This is one of the most exciting stories I have heard in my life time. I can't wait for the research that will follow this study.

[someonenotnoone]

Love that PBS Space Time is picking this up so quickly - I am very keen to learn more about these developments with tryptophan. I honestly was one of those doubters, wondering why Penrose thought this was even required for undecidability. The game of life runs on basic computers and it's undecidable - why should consciousness need quantum effects just for that? But here we are and it's super interesting.

[Yitzhk]

This is so perfectly communicated. Thorough acknowledgement that there's a great deal of warranted skepticism, without dismissing it outright, and exploring the interesting elements without necessarily accepting the whole.

[HenryKlausEsq.]

So happy you tackled this topic. I think the context laid out in this video was really well done. Sabine's video ended with "But why are quantum processes needed for cognition? Don't know." but you covered this in a respectful, yet scientifically careful (for lack of a better term) way. Well done to all involved.

[SketchNI]

I think I'm more impressed with Matt got to "spacetime" than with how much I understood this video.

[adammotycka]

Roger Penrose is definitely in my top 3 favourite thinkers of all time ❤ thanks Matt