Conscious Carrots

“The Brain Is Both Neurocomputer And Quantum Computer,” by Stuart Hammeroff is a fascinating paper which discusses the computational mechanism used in the human brain. The prevalent understanding of computation in the human brain is the parallel firing of neurons to spread activation. In this paper, Hameroff discusses the validity of considering quantum events as working in tandem with neuron firing.

The story of Schrödinger's cat is used to illustrate the idea behind quantum events. Schrödinger's cat is placed in a closed box along with a capsule which might break in the course of an hour and release a poison gas killing the cat and with equal probability will remain sealed. While the box is closed the cat can either be alive, dead, or both dead and alive simultaneously. Being able to wrap one’s head around this fact is undoubtedly difficult, but it is used in practice. In a normal computer information is encoded with a series of 1 and 0 bit states. In a quantum computer there is an added state of 1 and 0 activated simultaneously.

Hameroff's paper proposes that quantum events not only play a crucial role in the brain's computation but that specifically they are related to consciousness in the human mind. Interestingly, quantum events are not unique to the human mind but they occur in our vegetables too. The quantum events in a carrot are infrequent but they might be construed as evidence that carrots are infrequently conscious. Funnily enough, the Buddhist belief that everything has a soul might find backing in this research.

Hammeroff's webpage:
http://www.hameroff.com/

A YouTube video on a Hameroff paper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw9Jo5qNCsQ


Conscious carrots. Boy, that's some catch indeed!