Career Advice for Physicist.

[bananabas]

By the way, have you ever come across the Hameroff-Penrose microtubule theory of consciousness, which hypothesizes that consciousness arises from quantum processes occurring within the interior of microtubules, which are organelles found in every cell?

I am vaguely familiar with Penrose's work on general relativity and Penrose tiling. I also read his book "The Emperor's New Mind" a long time ago. I remember in the book he mentions consciousness from a physical perspective.

I found this theory very interesting, but I only understand it at the popular science book reading level, not in any technical detail. Originally Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff proposed that Bose-Einstein condensates were occurring within microtubules, and that these were the basis for human (and presumably animal) consciousness, and the means by which consciousness processes information. However, I understand this Bose-Einstein idea did not quite work out, so they now have proposed a Frohlich condensate instead. More info here.

I recall feeling excited about the whole "physics of consciousness" business back in high-school after reading Penrose's book. I am less excited now however, for various reasons, but mainly because

We do not know what consciousness is, where it is located, or in fact, even if such a thing exists. Consciousness is mainly a philosophycal concept, and, while physics has its ancient roots in phylosophy, it has grown increasingly apart from it over time. While there are still some physicists trying to find some meaning to quantum mechanics, most have given up and moved on. We discover the laws of nature, strange as they are. We make theories, which lead to predictions, which can be tested by experiments and which lead to new theories. We like to talk about measurable quantities - consciousness is definately not one of them.

There are a lot of beautiful theories out there like string theory for instance which, while mathematically or logically sound, have failed to produce any experimentally verifiable evidence. It is not clear how many verifiable predictions the Orch-OR model makes. Statements such as

Penrose claims that such information is Platonic, representing pure mathematical truth, aesthetic, and ethical values at the Planck scale.

make me think that not too many. They do seem to propose an
experiment, but it looks like no one has attemped it yet.

From that same wiki page

Penrose sought to reconcile general relativity and quantum theory using his own ideas about the possible structure of spacetime.

A lot of talented scientists tried to do that, including Einstein, and so far they all failed. The only references given here are two of his books. If you really reconcile GR and quantum theory you publish a series of papers and get thousands of citations.

Physical theories are measured by how accurate their predictions are and very good theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics make very accurate predictions. The measured anomalous magnetic moment of the electron agrees with the theoretical QED value within 14 digits of precision, for instance. This is what physics is about - it is an exact science.
The interpretation of these theories however is a different issue altogether, as Richard Feynman once said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".

As for the medical ramifications of this microtubule theory of consciousness, Hameroff et al published a paper hypothesizing that a degradation in microtubule polymerization and stability leads to the reduction of conscious awareness, memory, and cognitive function that is characteristic of Alzheimer's. Hameroff proposes that in Alzheimer's, microtubules are destabilized as a result of altered intracellular zinc levels; the zinc levels he says are themselves perturbed by the beta amyloid plaque found in Alzheimer's.

I cannot really comment on this, science is *very* specialised and this is far removed from my field. I can only see this paper from 2012 only has 68 citations, probably few for a hot topic such as Alzheimer's.

Of course, the Hameroff-Penrose theory of consciousness is just a hypothesis, but it is one area where quantum theory and human cognition may coincide. So perhaps your field of physics is not that far removed from consciousness and the brain as you think!

We know so little of how the brain works at this point that I really do not see the benefit of throwing quantum theory in the mix, just because it sounds "sexy" or because coherence and consciousness sound like they could be related.

Although I would not have thought that microtubules and the Hameroff-Penrose theory of consciousness, even if true, play a role in the reduction of consciousness (brain fog) that occurs in ME/CFS; I think it is more likely that ME/CFS brain fog will be explained at the biochemical level of neurotransmitters.

I agree, it is probably a neurochemical thing.

Having said that, interestingly, some ME/CFS patents, and lupus patients (who also suffer brain fog), have been shown to have autoantibodies to microtubule proteins, and these antibodies could be disrupting the microtubules, and the quantum states hypothesized to exist inside them, possibly reducing consciousness.

This is already too speculatory for my taste. We know basically nothing about consciousness, very little about microtubule proteins and their role, have no direct evidence for the existence of quantum states inside them, and are completely in the dark as to how all this relates to brain fog.

All this being said, quantum coherent states have been found in biological systems, and this is the subject matter of quantum biology. While an interesting field, it is still in its infancy and probably requires many years to yield any practical applications.