Sunday, April 11, 2010

Quantum model for qualia, sensory receptor, and hearing

I am continung the updating the books about TGD inspired theory of consciousness. I just finished the chapter about quantum model of hearing- certainly the ugliest duckling in the flock represented by the books about TGD and TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

The key idea was inspired by a model of photoreceptors. The question was whether nearly vacuum extremals of Kähler action for which parity breaking is large due to the presence of classical Z0 field might explain chiral selection in living matter and provide model for a sensory receptor and even cell membrane space-time sheet in general as a critical system. The completely unexpected discovery was that the peak frequencies of photoreceptors coincide with Josephson frequencies of the 4 biologically most important ions in the effective membrane potential containing also Z0 contribution provided the value of Weinberg angle is sin2W)=.0295. After this observation the ideas started to flow rapidly and it took two weeks to build a reasonably stable general picture.

  1. Josephson photons have a dual interpretation as large hbar EEG photons and as biophotons: these two phenomena are reflections of one and same thing. This is a victory for the hierachy of Planck constants.
  2. DNA as topological quantum computer model led to the identification of the fundamental sensory qualia as quantum numbers assignable to quark pair (or pair of them depending on option) in turn associated with flux tube connecting DNA nucleotide and lipid.
  3. Cell membrane (at least axon) makes cell (at least neuron) a kind of homunculus with each lipid/nucleotide representing a pixel colored by different fundamental qualia.
  4. Qualia obey quantum synesthesia in the sense that the composites of spin, electroweak, and color numbers are analogous the synesthetic associations of basic qualia: this has nothing to do with ordinary synesthesia. This could make associative neurons in associative areas quantum synesthetes binding various sensory inputs to colors of single pixel of axonal membrane. Cell and genome would be also sensory holograms.
  5. The model for the magnetic body and its function becomes much more detailed and the vision about spectroscopy of consciousness- one of the ultra-romantic ideas which I have felt shame for- is realized since Josephson frequencies code for qualia.

I attach below the abstract of Quantum Model of Hearing. The material about the model for qualia can be also found from General Theory of Qualia.

The quantum model of hearing has evolved through several twists and turns. The emergence of zero energy ontology, the explanation of dark matter in terms of a hierachy of Planck constants requiring a generalization of the notion of imbedding space, the view about life as something in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds, and the notion of number theoretic entanglement negentropy led to the breakthrough in TGD inspired quantum biology and also to the recent view of qualia and sensory representations including hearing allowing a precise quantitative model at the level of cell membrane. This also modified dramatically the speculative ideas about the role of neutrinos in hearing.

Also in the recent view long range weak play a key role. They are made possible by the exotic ground state represented as almost vacuum extremal of Kähler action for which classical em and Z0 fields are proportional to each other wheras for standard ground state classical Z0 fields are very weak. Neutrinos are present but it seems that they do not define cognitive representations in the time scales characterizing neural activity. Electrons and quarks for which the time scales of causal diamonds correspond to fundamental biorhythms, take this role.

The ensuing general model of how cell membrane acts as a sensory receptor has unexpected implications for the entire TGD inspired view about biology.

  1. The most important implication concerning the model of sensory receptors relates to the vacuum degeneracy of Kähler action. It has been clear from the beginning that the nearly vacuum extremals of Kähler action could play key role key role in living systems. The reason is their criticality making them ideal systems for sensory perception. These extremals carry classical em and Z0 fields related to each other by a constant factor and this could explain the large parity breaking effects characterizing living matter. The assumption that cell membranes are nearly vacuum extremals and that nuclei can feed their Z0 charges to this kind of space-time sheets in living matter leads to a modification of the model for cell membrane as Josephson junction. Also a model of photoreceptors explaining the frequencies of peak sensitivity as ionic Josephson frequencies and allowing the identification of biophotons as Josephson radiation emerges and will be discussed in the sequel. The value of Weinberg angle in this phase is fixed to sin2W)=.0295, whereas in standard phase the value is given by sin2W)=.23.

  2. DNA as topological quantum computer model plus certain simplifying assumption leads to the conclusion that the spectrum of net quantum numbers of quark antiquark pair define the primary qualia assignable to a nucleotide-lipid pair connected by a magnetic flux tube. The most general prediction is that the net quantum numbers of two quark pairs characterize the qualia. In the latter case the qualia would be assigned to a pair of receptor cells.

  3. Composite qualia result when one allows the nucleotide-lipid pairs of the membrane to be characterized by a distribution of quark-antiquark pairs. Cell membrane -or at least the axonal parts of neurons- would define a sensory representation in which is a pair of this kind defines a pixel characterized by primary qualia. Cells would be sensory homunculi and DNA defines a sensory hologram of body of or of part of it. Among other things this would give a precise content to the notion of grandma cell.

  4. Josephson frequencies of biologically important ions are in one-one correspondence with the qualia and Josephson radiation could re-generate the qualia or map them to different qualia in a one-one and synesthetic manner in the neurons of the sensory pathway. For large values of Planck constant Josephson frequencies are in EEG range so that a direct connection with EEG emerges and Josephson radiation indeed corresponds to both biophotons and EEG. This would realize the notion of sensory pathway which originally seemed to me a highly non-realistic notion and led to the vision that sensory qualia can be realized only at the level of sensory organs in TGD framework.

  5. At the level of brain motor action and sensory perception look like reversals of each other. In zero energy ontology motor action can be indeed seen as a time reversed sensory perception so that the model of sensory representations implies also a model for motor action. Magnetic body serves as a sensory canvas where cyclotron transitions induced by Josephson frequencies induce conscious sensory map entangling the points of the magnetic body with brain and body.

The model for hearing follows as a special case from the general model for sensory receptor and representations.

  1. Concerning hearing, the basic questions relate to the precise identification of the hearing quale, to the representation of pitch of the sound at the magnetic body, and to the representation of various geometric data about sound. The electromagnetic charge of the quark pair (or equivalently electroweak isospin) looks like an excellent candidate in this respect so that charge increment would define one fundamental hearing quale.

    This quale need not correspond to pitch. The vision about hearing as a frequency quale suggests that cyclotron transition frequency corresponds to the pitch. Sound frequency would be coded to an increment of cyclotron frequency and pitch would be a quale assignable to magnetic body rather than biological body. Hearing would in a well-defined sense represent a higher level sense not understandable without the notion of magnetic body. The strength of the magnetic field would code for cyclotron frequency and therefore for the pitch. One of the mysteries related to hearing is the ability to hear frequencies much higher than the maximum rate of nerve pulses which is below kHz. The coding by Josephson frequencies and representation of them as quale of the magnetic body resolves this mystery.

  2. At quantative level the first challenge is to understand the typical hearing ranges (humans, mice, bats, sea mammals) and here the time scales of CDs associated with quarks and leptons give intriguing hints. Also their cyclotron frequencies are involved and large values of Planck constant are unavoidably involved. Josephson frequencies are given by the effective membrane potential (Z0 potential must be included) divided by Planck constant and it is possible to represent arbitrarily low frequencies in terms of membrane potential by allowing Planck constant to have high enough values.

  3. The extreme rapidity of signalling from hair cells to brain is one of the mysteries of hearing and here Josephson radiation (biophotons) provides a direct neuronal window with practically instantaneous communication. Microtubles could be associated with the flux tubes along which Josephson radiation propagates and also microtubular conformational waves could be involved.

  4. Hearing represent in many respects an exceptional quale: consider only music experience, language, internal speech, the understanding and production of speech, and right brain sings- left brain talks metaphor. This conforms with the assumption that magnetic body is involved in essential manner with hearing. Zero energy ontology leads to a vision explaining basic aspects of music experience and the notion of memetic code plus possible realization of genetic code as temporal patterns could provide first principle understanding of language.

1 comment:

Ulla said...

Maybe you see now why I chose 'spectroscopy of consciousness'? It was no bad choice :) No accident.

Entanglement should give energy, but I begin to freeze. I wish you had not so much 'mission' and more time to talk. Not yet? I wait.

Yet, this qualia is a masterpiece.